Had a little water damage on my hardwood floor - impacted about 1.5 feet of my hardwood flooring which runs throughout the main floor of my house. I’ve had a couple of repair estimates am receiving differing opinions. One opinion is that the replacement hardwood for the damaged area cannot be matched to the existing floor, so the entire main floor has to be replaced. The other opinion says it can be matched. Anyone have any personal experience or knowledge?
You need to ask the company that believes it can match the flooring how it is that that could be done. It is possible that company has access to different materials and expertise than the other one does.
1.5 feet is not all that much. Are the closets floored with this material too? It might be possible to use wood that currently is in a closet to make a patch, and then put the damaged wood there where normally it wouldn’t be seen.
I had a wall taken out between the dining room and kitchen. The kitchen floor was taken out and replaced with hardwood to match the dining room. You can’t tell where the old floor ends and the new one begins (except the old floor creaks and the new floor doesn’t.)
Our neighbors had a large segment of their wood flooring (which extended throughout their first level) water-damaged (flooding). The damaged sections were replaced with wood flooring that exactly matches the undamaged flooring. No one can tell the difference - even knowing exactly where to look.
the floors installed in my kitchen and family room addition were matched to the existing hardwoods in the rest of the house. They were even prefinished.
I am having the entry into my dining room from my living room enlarged and need a small section of floor put in. It will be matched, too.
It should be possible to match it, if the existing flooring is not particularly unique. It comes down to matching the kind of stain used on the existing flooring via color matching and using varnish similar to what is on the rest of the floors. A lot depends on the shape the existing flooring is in, might be harder with older, more worn flooring. I suspect if the existing flooring is in good shape, they should be able to match it, but I think that the guy who told you you needed to do the whole thing either saw an opportunity to get you to pay for the whole thing being replaced, or didn’t want the bother of trying to match it, or both. Something similar happens with auto body repair, they are able to replace panels and color match existing paint, that has faded over time, rather than overspraying the whole car.
We had our floors refinished in August. A few boards needed to be replaced. I can’t even tell where. You might have to have the room sanded down and refinished…but replace the whole floor? NO!
Our resident remodeler coralbrook has successfully matched decades old floors with new stuff. It can be done, unless your existing floor has been sanded down so many times that it is now paper thin and cannot be refinished (I doubt that).
We just had some existing hardwoods refinished in our kitchen/living/dining rooms; at the same time, had carpet pulled up from three bedrooms and had unfinished hardwood put down and stained with the same stain they used on the other areas. You can’t tell where one stops and another starts.
I greatly appreciate all of these helpful responses. The hardwood in my house is less than 3 years old and is pre-finished. Based on the responses it sounds like it should be able to be matched… which would be much less expensive than the alternative…
Resident Remodeler here…
The key question is… are you going to try to pull up just the 1.5 sq ft and try to patch in new floor? Or, are you going to patch in the area and then sand down and refinish the entire floor?
If you are sanding down the entire floor and refinishing, it can definitely be matched.
If you are patching in and hoping it will match, it would depend on what type of stain and finish is on your existing floor. I am assuming it is oak hardwoods? You need a master guy to exactly match the stain and finish, but it can be done. If the area is very conspicuous in your house, I would recommend gently removing some of the original flooring out of a closet and patching in with that flooring. Then put the new flooring with stain/finish into the closet. But, this can backfire if the open area has ‘faded’ and the closet hasn’t faded. The issue with putting new wood flooring into the patch is that it will shrink/expand and you might get some gaps between the planks, as compared to the rest of your floor.
Thanks Coralbrook - I will ask the contractor. As I understand, he intends to patch the area with pre-finished wood, and NOT sand. The wood is a pre-finished classic red oak hardwood. Manufacturers of the product include Mirage Wood Floor (classic red oak); Shaw Industries (Bellingham); Armstrong (Prime Harvest). And yes, it it is very conspicuous place - front room immediately seen when you walk into the house.
@coralbrook:
That is a good point, but given the flooring is of recent vintage, matching it shouldn’t be that much of a problem and matching stains is not exactly that difficult, these days they have apps on phones that can match the colors, and the wood is likely standard hardwood that is easy to match as well.
@hanaliy is he patching with the SAME flooring that is currently there? Can you see a sample placed next to your current floor?
We had H’s folks’ home with pine floors repaired, including replacing some of the floorboards. You can’t tell which boards were replaced and they didn’t refinish anything, just replaced the needed boards and put some protective coating on it. The floor is over 60 years old!
My sister had some of her kitchen white oak floor repaired and replaced, but you can’t tell which boards are original and which were replaced. I don’t believed they refinished the wile floor either.
I redid my kitchen and family room a few years back. The kitchen had wood floors and was separated from the carpeted family room by a pass-through cabinet / bookcase. We took out the cabinet and extended the wood flooring to the family room. You absolutely can not tell where the “new” flooring began.
We had an air register space in the floor filled in, about 14" by 18". The floor guys replaced wood at different spots along the lengths of the boards so there would be no obvious rectangular seam. They also matched the color perfectly. The floor is from 1867 and H and I are very pleased.
@thumper1 Yes, I believe he is searching for the same wood now, and will provide a sample to place next to the existing floor.
I’m following all of these flooring threads with interest because this spring holds the promise of ripping up the carpet in the living room and hopefully finding the original hardwood flooring sitting there ready to be easily finished. (Let me live with my naïve optimism!)