Refinishing an old painted hard wood floor?

Question

I have an old (around 100 years old) wood floor in my bedroom, it was covered with carpet, after pulling up the carpet we found the floor beneath was damaged from nails and painted gray.

How can I refinish this floor? What will I need? and what would be you guess on how much it will cost?

The room is about 17 X 15, and has about 20 stairs.

Answer 1

After having done numerous hardwood floors and refinishes I can say without hesitation. First, spot check the paint. Use a scraper or chisel to check quality of paint, how many layers and condition and type of floor underneath. Second, check with a piece of 60 grit sandpaper how fast it gums up as this will be indicative of the floor sanding process and wether or not you may want to consider stripping first with a GREEN stripper. Stripping can be messy but may save you heart ache and labor in the final analysis. Sanding screens instead of papers work best with a floor buffing machine. It takes a little getting used to but becomes almost natural after a bit. Start with a 40 or 50 grit and work your way up to 120 or 150 grit. I have polished floors with sandpaper all the way up to 1000 grit and they quite literally glow with character. A good gymnasium grade poly is the way to go if you will have heavy traffic. Good luck and thanks for saving the wood.

Answer 2

Unless you have experience at refinishing wood floors, I don't recommend that you do it yourself. I bought a house from a guy who sanded and refinished his floors himself and it looked terrible. There were all these sanding marks and dips in the floor where he left the sanding drum in one place too long. I had to have the floors refinished before I moved in.

Also, that paint could be very problematic. It will clog up the sanding machine and you'll have to keep replacing the sand paper. Besides, how do you know that there is even enough wood left to refinish? What I mean is, when you refinish a wood floor, you take about 1/16 of an inch of wood off by sanding. If that floor is really old, who knows how many times it's been refinished? By the time you get the paint off and get the floor sanded smooth, you might be all the way down to the nails.

If you want to do the job right, I would recommend replacing the floor altogether. I would also suggest installing an unfinished floor and having it finished later. While this may be more expensive than installing a pre-finished floor, there are a couple of advantages. First, you get to choose exactly what stain color you'll have, as opposed to being at them mercy of whatever is available at the store. Second, you can let the floor sit and acclimate for a few days before finishing. If the wood shrinks a bit and there are cracks between the slats, these will get filled in when the finish coat is put on.

Good 3/4-inch oak plank flooring (solid wood) will cost you about $4 a square foot if you shop around. Don't get the engineered stuff. It has plies (like plywood) and the refinishable surface is only about 1/8 inch thick. That means you can only refinish it a couple of times before you have to replace it. A solid 3/4-inch plank has about 1/4 inch of refinishable surface. So, it will last virtually forever.

Installation will cost about $2 to $2.50 a square foot. And, pay someone to do this. The professionals know how to lay the flooring down with the right randomness to not form a pattern (a must for a wood floor). They also have the tools and knowhow to set the planks properly.

Sanding and finishing will cost $4 to $5 a square foot, more if you have multiple sealer coats put down (an additional 50 cents a layer).

So, you're looking at $10 to $12 per square foot. That would be about $1500 to $1750 for the size room you're doing.

Stairs are another issue. Hardwood stair caps and risers (the vertical part of the stairs) can cost upwards of about $200 per stair. They're also very difficult to refinish, because it has to be done by hand-held machine. I would suggest calling a floor installer/refinisher and ask them what you should do about that. But, I would strongly urge you to have professionals do the work instead of doing it yourself.

Answer 3

The best way to do this is to have it professionally sanded...they use a drum sanding unit that takes a person that knows what they are doing to opertate it...Great thing is...Don't do anything about the nail holes....the paint will come out when it is sanded...There are also probley dark spots from the carpet...again when it is sanded it will take out a lot but not all...Use a Clear ploy finish (matt or semi-gloss) the end results looks so cool because you see the nail holes and the dark spot but it added to the look...remember it may be 100 years old and that look is what people pay big buck to get on a new floor....

Answer 4

takes a lot of time, but this isnt too bad. i took stripper and scrapped off an area 3feet wide, decided i didnt want to sand because i didnt want the floor looking perfect. it had spots, took dentured alchohol and cleaned it with steel wool.then stained.then started the next section did the same thing. then i put polyurthane on the first part. 5 coats and kept going. right know u can see the reflection of my tv on the floor its that shiny!! oh i removed the baseboards too. my den floor looked crappy so i bought white paint, thinned it with paint thinner, and painted the polyed that. looks good

Answer 5

You might want to check with a hardware store that rents floor sanding machines. They could recommend the best way to do it. Sanding it and giving it a few coats of Urethane varnish would give the nicest results. The varnish costs about $35.00 a gallon, covers about 400 Sq, Ft. Cost of the sanding machine and sandpaper materials would vary between places you rent from.