Hardwood Floor Refinishing

Floor installation, Floor repair

Posts Tagged ‘diy’

Floor installation: the beginning.

Filed Under : Installation and repair by admin
Mar.13,2010

By Broc.

It is time to get to the actual details on the hardwoods installation process. When you have shopped around and finally found the type of hardwood flooring you wanted, it is necessary to have it kept in your house for about two weeks, or at least for a few days. The longer the better, but two weeks is pretty much enough, though. It is done for the purpose of acclimatisation of the wood with your house temperature. This way wood won’t start shrinking later, which would have happened if you’d install it right away. After you have waited enough, it is time to begin the installation process. Clean the area very well, it should be nice and flat, especially for prefinished flooring. Drive down sticking out nails, remove little pieces of stones, and sweep well. Oh, almost forgot: if you’re using the staples, never install on the particle board! It is NOT suitable for holding staples, and later on the floor will move, since particle board doesn’t hold staples and nails very well. Install on the plywood or existing old wooden flooring. If you have a particle board for the sub floor, you need to either remove it or install a plywood on top of it, depending on the clearance issues. So, after preparing the surface, choose the wall you gonna start at. If you’re installing on a plywood, lay the boards preferably across the beams. You can easily determine the way the beams go by looking at the longest nail lines on a plywood, or, if in doubt, you can figure it out by looking at the beams in the basement. If you’re installing on the existing flooring (could be wide pine planks or just worn out hardwoods) always go across it. This way new floor will be more flat and stronger.

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How to refinish wood floors

Filed Under : Floor refinishing by admin
Feb.20,2010

For those of you who doesn’t know this, here is the order, in which the floor should be refinished:

1. Rough sand with the big machine (normally 36 grit sandpaper).

2. Rough sand with the edger.

3. Rough sand underneath the radiators and in the corners.

4. Fill the nailholes.

5. Fine sand  with the big machine (normally with 80 grit sandpaper).

6. Fine sand with the edger.

7. Scrape the corners.

8. Buff the floors (normally 120 grit discs).

9.Vacuum the floors.

10. Coat of sealer.

11. Coat of polyurethane.

12. Fill the nailholes (if you missed some).

13. Buff the floors

14. Vacuum the floors.

15. Final coat of polyurethane.

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Hardwood Floors – Refinish Or Not

Filed Under : Floor refinishing by admin
Feb.3,2010

First of all you should decide whether you want to completely refinish them, or just make them look a little better. I would like to point out to you that if your floors look dirty, they lost some shine, or even worn down a bit, it’s not necessary that you need to completely refinish them. Trust me, sometimes a little bit of hand sanding and a coat of fresh poly make miracles.

If you just want to shine your floors up a bit and put a coat of polyurethane on them, you will need to figure out what kind of poly is on your floor already. There are two types: water-based and oil-based. You DO NOT what to put one kind of poly on top of the other. It’s not gonna stick, will eventually peel off and you will end up sanding the hell out of them. If you waxed your floor before, don’t even bother putting poly on them without sanding them down to the bare wood. Poly will bubble up and you will be stuck with the refinishing project anyway.

Now, how to figure out what kind of poly is on the floor? A few years back I would say that if your floor has a rich yellow color it definitely has an oil-based poly. Right now it’s tough to say. I know at least 4 different kinds of water-based poly that look exactly like an oil-based. Your best bet would be to take a piece of 120 grit sandpaper and try to hand sand them a little. If it clogs up real easy – you can be 99% sure that it’s a water-based.

Now- to the process. Before you are going to make your beloved floors look like brand new, you need to concentrate your attention on sanding. You will need to light sand them all over and clean them up after that. Make sure that you didn’t leave any dirt and dust. To clean the floors up you can either vacuum them (regular vacuum-cleaner won’t work – not strong enough, wet-dry vac should do), or mop them. If you mopped your floors, you don’t what to apply poly right away, let them dry first.

Once you’ve started to apply the poly, make sure that it sticks good. If it spreads evenly- you are good. If you applied it and after a little while (it usually happens after 3-4 minutes) you start seeing that this beautiful, evenly- spreaded coat of yours starts to bubble up – then you are in trouble(told you not to put poly on the waxed floor).

If you want to put several coats of poly, you DO NOT have to lightsand your floors after each coat (like it says on every single can of poly). Once before the first one and once before the last one will do. Save your time and energy for something else. And don’t forget- with a little bit of hard work you CAN do it as good as any professional. Good luck!

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Floor refinishing: should you do it yourself or hire a contractor?

Filed Under : Floor refinishing by admin
Feb.2,2010

So, you just bought the house, or lived in the house for years and all this time you had a wall to wall carpeting, or in some cases linoleum..One of those days you decided to remove it, lifted it up and discovered a hardwood flooring, which is in really bad shape(sometimes covered in glue or other nasty stuff).Well, what’s next?

You have 2 choices here: do it yourself or hire a professional. Let’s do some thinking.

Of course a lot of homeowners will say that they can do their floors easily.That statement could not be further from the truth.Floor refinishing is not the type of work that anyone can do.There are so many ways to screw up your floors, while sanding them, that I could probably write another article just on this topic.Not to mention a mess you can make while coating your floors.

But let’s imagine, that every homeowner has a good idea of the refinishing process.Let’s just talk numbers here.We are going to take one room, for example(for bigger projects you’re definitely going to need a pro, unless you have a huge amount of pills for the back, knees and hands).

The floor guy will charge you something like $300-$500 for the room.That normally includes sanding your floor down to the wood, 1 coat of sealer and 2 coats of polyurethane.Of course, he has tools necessary for completion of the job.

If you will decide to refinish the floors yourself, you are going to need the following:

1.Big drum/belt sander(220v), which will be unavailable to rent, because it is made especially for professional  use and it’s a little tricky.So you will end up renting a small(110v) belt sander at the Home Depot for around $50 a day+ the sandpaper(say another $40).Note: with the small sander you won’t come even close to the result you’re looking for.It simply lacks power necessary to take of all the old finish.

2.Edger(around $20)+ the sandpaper-another $40.

3.Radiator sander- good luck looking for that one.the only way to get it is to buy it.they retail new for around $500.

4.Buffer- another $20+ the sreen for it($5)

5.Vacuum cleaner(let’s hope that you have a good one)

6.Polyurethane - I’d say since we’re talking about one room only you’re going to need 1 gal. of sealer($20) and 1 gal. of poly($20)

I’m not going to mention here all the small tools that you’re going to need to do the job right.Let’s do the math: to refinish the floor yourself, you’re going to spend $215(if everything goes nice and smooth and if you know what are you doing)  , not to mention your time(how much would you pay yourself to do this job?) and effort.

Well, here is the info you going to need to make a decision.The rest is up to you.Good luck!

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