Restoring Old Hardwood Flooring:

• Found a jewel under that old carpeting?
• Not sure if it can be refinished or restored?
• A few basics to learn if hardwood flooring can be repaired and refinished
• Hardwood floor restoring

Today many are discovering what could be the showpiece of any older home; beautiful hardwood floors. Restoring old hardwood flooring to its original appearance is often the thought on many new homeowner's minds.

Many older hardwood floors offered higher quality hardwoods such as old growth and quarter sawn material. Old growth was harvested from trees much older than what they mill today as many areas are now protected from lumbering. These types of floors show a much tighter grain pattern due to their age and the number of growth rings.

How do I know what's under that raggedy looking carpet?

There's only one-way of finding out...pull the carpet back. To do so take a pair of pliers, grab a section in a corner and pull back. Hopefully you will be dealing with a stretched in type of carpet and not any glued down types. You may also encounter holes in the original floor itself that were used for radiator heating. These can be repaired with any knowledgeable professional.

How do I know if the floors can be refinished?

One key in determining how many times the floor has been refinished would be to look at the wear layer that is left on the flooring itself. In the image below, the wear layer (white) is the area above the tongue and groove. There have been different thicknesses of hardwood flooring milled over the years and their wear layers are different. To check for the current thickness, one place to look would be around removable heating register vents.

What else to expect when the carpet is removed?

When wall to wall carpet became big in the 60's and 70's, many hardwood floors were covered up. You may discover carpet padding that has been attached with hundreds of staples or adhesive of some sort. With much older hardwood floors you may find screws and nails that previous homeowners used to stop squeaks. Carpet tack strip will have to be removed. Don't be surprised to find pet stains or other similar stains in the hardwood floor. In many cases these cannot be removed and replacement becomes necessary. We've seen many hardwood floors that were covered with layers of linoleum that were brought back to their original beauty.

Hardwood floor restoring

We recommend a professional to have your hardwood floor restore, in this case you should contact us and find out some fair prices for restoration process.

Also you can do it yourself, but you have to rent a lot of tools for resanding process and you've got to be prepared for some laborious work. Tools that you might need for restoring old and new hardwood are: drum machine for sanding larger areas of your floors, edger for tight spaces and edges of rooms, scrapper for corners. Also couple abrasive belts are needed for the machines.

After (re)sanding the finishing process follows where you might need a proffesional vacuum for absorbing all of the dust from the floor, disposable containers, rubber gloves, varnish, foam brush.

We guarantee superior quality of work and satisfaction.