Construction & Contractors Blog
Do you have wood floors that have seen a lot of wear and tear over the years? Rather than ripping out that wood and replacing it with new material, you can actually refinish it to make it look good again. Here is what is involved in refinishing hardwood flooring in a home.
Check The Flooring
It's always a good idea to check the flooring to make sure that it can be refinished and that it is necessary. A good way to do this is by actually putting a small amount of water on your floor. If it beads up on the surface, then the floors may be fine. However, if the water soaks into the wood immediately, the wood has no natural layer of protection and should be refinished.
Prep The Flooring
The next step is to prepare your floor to be sanded, which includes removing blinds, curtains, pictures, and anything else that could be hanging up on the wall. Air register covers will need to be blocked off so that dust cannot get into them. Shoe moldings will need to be removed too, and when doing so, it helps to label the moldings in a way so that you know how they go back on when you are finished. Nail heads will need to be driven into the floor to avoid having the sanding discs rip apart when they go over them.
Sand The Flooring
A random orbital sander works best for sanding wood floors since the pattern of the sander is not going to leave any marks on the floor that you will notice. The sander should go along the grain of the wood so that it is easy to keep track of which areas have been sanded. If the sander is used in one area for too long, it can actually cause a significant portion of the wood to be sanded away, which there is no way to repair without putting in new floor boards. Following the sanding with buffing will remove fine scratches in the floor, and then the wood should be covered with mineral spirits.
Finish The Flooring
Now is the time to change the look of your hardwood flooring. You can apply a stain at this point to make the wood look darker if that is the look that you want. Either way, the job is finished by applying a polyurethane finish so that the wood is sealed and the surface is shiny.
To learn more, contact a wood floor refinishing company.
Share29 January 2021
Have you ever driven past a large building that was still under construction? You may have stopped for a moment and admired the steel trusses and the heavy concrete blocks used to form and support such a large architectural creation. Here's a secret: construction workers do the same. Workers in this industry never cease to be amazed at what they can create from seemingly boring materials. Concrete turns into a school. Steel turns into a doctor's office. It really is incredible. You may not feel quite as amazed as you read about construction on this blog, but if you get at least a fraction of that wondered, amused feeling, we will be satisfied.
