Our house had fir floors that were very nice, but after refinishing them twice, there wasn’t enough material left. We just (last week) redid 600 sq ft with a prefinished hickory hardwood, “character grade” - took 2 days. Contractor (redoing kitchen too) kept pushing us to do a traditional hardwood floor that would then have been sanded and stained but we have had it with the smell and disruption. If you’re putting in prefinished flooring, you can do a room or area and move your furniture around. It was a pain to do, but better than totally emptying the rooms. If we had done the traditional way, we would have rented a Pod trailer and moved everything into that. Haven’t even seen the new floor because it is covered so kitchen cabinets can be installed.
If it’s not terribly expensive I would do it. Your house will sell faster and you’ll enjoy it until then.
Ugh…we have been in limbo for over a year while we try to figure out what to do with our flooring. Currently we have carpeting in living room, dining room and family room. There is tile in the foyer, hallway, kitchen, half bath and laundry room. It is a neutral white tile but it is outdated. We replaced the carpeting once and needs done again. The tile floor is cold in our climate and hard to stand on for long periods of time. We have 5 estimates for hardwood and they vary in price by thousands of dollars. We have lots of oak woodwork and cabinets already in the house so picking a type of wood and color has been difficult. This has been so stressful for us!
@NorthMinnesota I would avoid trying to match the existing oak-it never goes well from what I’ve seen, and it ends up looking like the inside of a boat or hunting cabin with all the wood everywhere.
There are times where I’m just stymied about what to do, and I have hired designers to help me (several live in the neighborhood-one is a VBD who is in magazines all the time).
The hardwood estimates should not vary that much-where are you seeing the price difference? Are they comparing apples to apples? Is the labor rate a lot different?
Prefinished hardwood flooring tends to be less of a hassle to put in than the kind that goes in raw and needs to be stained and urethaned. You also don’t have to live with the smell of the curing urethane (I"m sensitive to smells like that).
Just make sure you get pre-finished hardwood flooring, which can be refinished if need be. The pre-finished engineered flooring is typically just a very thin veneer of real wood with an underlayment attached. This works well for basement floors and areas in high moisture, but you can’t refinish them.
We do NOT have stain on our red oak floors…and we like it that way. If I went to see a house, and the floors were dark, I wouldn’t buy it.
Let the new owners decide what to do, in my opinion. It won’t be hard for them to get floors refinished BEFORE they move in. The house will be empty.
I believe you can refinish engineered wood, at least once, maybe twice.
Depends on the engineered wood.
Agree with @BunsenBurner . We looked at engineered flooring. Some could not be refinished even once. Some could be done twice. None could be done more than twice.
We went with regular hardwood flooring.
Ahhh…ok. Good question to ask the salesperson.
S1 went with engineered wood flooring even though he cannot refinish it. The finish wears better with 3 big dogs and a cat in the house.
If we did not do new roof, windows and floor our house would not sell quickly or for the price we want in our neighborhood. We looked at prefinished samples but can’t find one that complements our oak trim, crown moulding, window seats, chair rail and stairs. And built ins in family room. LOTS of 80’s brown oak. It is a big house…4,000 sq feet so lots of floor space. I am getting desperate and just find something that looks nice. sigh…
The price difference is from tearing out existing tile floor, whether to remove island base that has tile underneath and thus having to remove granite countertop, and how to lay flooring around fluted moulding on some door casings and around stove. The best contractor thinks we need to lay a new sub floor to help with transition. He is a perfectionist and I have used him in the past. Fantastic work but very expensive.
We have the oak trim also @NorthMinnesota, so hard to figure out. Our oak is very pretty actually, gives the house an arts and craft kind of look. And there is tons of it, so trying to replace would not work.
Last year, we had the choice to replace the flooring or go to Italy. Went to Italy 