Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Got my floors done - before and after pics

Looks beautiful! My parents' house is comprised of almost entirely hardwood floor (all except kitchen and bathroom), and my mom refinished much of it herself when I was in grade school. It's a night and day difference, particularly if you see different portions of the same floor done at different times (we had to stagger it since the living room and hallway have no separation).

Looks good.
I'm a contractor and mainly do custom hardwood floors. You have to watch your floor guys to make sure they don't use cheap finish, especially when it's a polyurethane. Bona and Duraseal make good polyurethane finishes. Just about ANY other polyurethane is crap, especially any home depot products.

Since you have older 3/8" or maybe 1/2" flooring, and nails are starting to show through... you probably should have gone with a tougher finish. If it's too thin to sand again, you're FUBAR if you scratch, dent or crease them.
An acid based finish like Glitza or a moisture cured urethane would have been a better choice as they are far tougher finishes.

Though, if your floors are the newer 3/4" thick or they've still got a bit of their overall thickness left after sanding, Bona's "traffic" finish is by far the best out there or another waterbased finish that is fairly close is called Streetshoe.

$3 a foot is pretty good, I only cut people a break like that when either business is slow or the job is pretty large. The median price for sand and refinish is about $3.50 a SQ FT, but from a medium color of stain and darker the price goes up.

Looks good Viss. You're floors look similiar to some of mine but maybe that's cause we live in the same town. Are you going to put some shoe mold down?

Yeah, I still have to install shoe molding. FWIW my house was built in '51... how about yours?

Swazo, thanks for the info. Duraseal was stipulated in the contract. I might have tried a stronger finish if I had known the floors were getting thin, but the nailheads didn't expose themselves until after the sanding. I guess the estimator should have measured them before writing the contract (or maybe he did, and this was just a high/thin area). I could have stopped work after the nailheads appeared and at least filled them in, but that would have cost an extra day. Plus they're not really that noticeable. These floors won't be high-use as long as I'm living here, so not really a big deal for me.

Joey, I had planned all along to go with a light/Scandinavian look, so I never considered stain. The trend does seem to be towards dark stain these days, but it's not really my taste.

great improvement! looks good Viss

ugh I hate dark stain. My house is FULL of it.
Thankfully it doesn't have dark stained hardwood floors though.
blech

My house was built in 1960 and my floors are the exact same color as your before pictures just not quite as worn.