We are finally putting some money into home improvements and plan to both refinish the existing hardwood floors in living and dining room and put a new floor into our family room, which currently sports a boy’s-bedroom-blue 24-year-old wall-to-wall carpet installed by either builder or first owner. Oh, and separately I plan to replace the equally old upstairs carpet with hardwood. This raises a lot of questions. If we do the family room floor the old-fashioned way, with floors installed and finished on-site, we have to do something with all the furniture in 3 rooms simultaneously because that way we would be dealing with fumes only once. I don’t care for the beveled look of prefinished wood, but would be willing to go that route upstairs for convience. Then today my sister suggested engineered wood and claimed that some of them would stand up to refinishing multiple times. Anyone have experience with this? Both the logistics of what to do with the furniture and the different flooring options?
We had carpet replaced in one room while having hardwood floors installed in a room nearby. The floor guys did one room first and then the next. They took care of the furniture and I was amazed! The couch was on its side in a hallway with the TV tucked protectively behind it. I just had to clear out drawers.
The best thing I did was take a photo of the tangle of wires behind the TV so it would be easier to reconnect.
Also, our hardwood was going over a concrete slab so we had to get wood that was layered, like plywood. I wouldn’t go for engineered wood since it can’t be refinished.
Yeah, that was my feeling about engineered wood, but I am hearing claims that some can be refinished, and I am skeptical. My worry about the furniture is that if they were finishing 3 rooms at once, the only place to stow 3 rooms of furniture would be the kitchen and front hall – that’s a lot of furniture in a small space and I doubt it would fit. I guess if the floor people move it for you, some could go in the garage. My sister said she hired movers to pack up and move her furniture – but she’s not exactly careful with her money, so not my best source of advice.
In our old house we had wood floors put down and had numerous layers of poly put on top. I loved the floors, we were on a crawl space. In our current house I had engineered wood put down because we are on a slab. I was worried about what would happen if we needed to refinish the floors. Well guess what it’s over 10 years later and they still look great.
This is with 3 kids and 2 cats and now a dog. I think the finishes they use and have been using for a number of years make it less likely that your engineered floors will get damaged.
We had the kitchen and laundry done first and a year or so later did the living, dining, and half bath. Oak, finished on site with the toxic fumes from the finish (installer said the other stuff doesn’t wear as well). We had to move out for 3 days both times as staying would not have been good for our health.
We redid the Swedish finish in the bedrooms ourselves with poly. Minimal fumes, IIRC, but it is definitely a different look.
Bona, which is a no fume water based finish, is being used in our area. I have my maple kitchen recoated on rare occasion, and they use a hard matt finish. It looks good and protects the wood quite well.
I don’t understand what you mean by the “beveled” look of prefinished hardwood? I have prefinished in my kitchen and in the addition we put on. The rest of my floors have the original floors from the mid 50’s and you can’t tell the difference from the two. We chose the new floors to match the old floors. Pre finished can also be refinished while engineered cannot, iirc.
^^The prefinished wood floors that I have seen have a tiny diagonal cut on the edges, so there is a small visible space between the boards. It looks different from wood laid down and finished in place. If there is prefinished wood that doesn’t do that, it would probably be my first choice.
@“great lakes mom”,how long does that finish last? I have always read that water-based finishes are less sturdy than oil-based.
I don’t know but mine you cannot tell any difference from the hardwoods that have been in my house since the ‘50’'s and there is no space between the boards in the new floor.
We had our floors finished in August. We moved all the furniture out…some to different rooms up stairs…and some onto the garage. Whole first floor was done. Well worth it!!
Our last water based lasted 20 years…Street Shoe.
With hardwood floor finishes, the answer is in how you treat them. If you walk in with muddy boots, don’t clean up after yourself, and rarely sweep, they will not last long. We had the floors in my current house refinished when we moved in, 1989 and finished with a water based finish. They still look quite good, though I care for them. For the most part, shoes are not worn in the house. Rugs are in the traffic areas as well as at every door, and I have special shoes to empty the trash and compost that I leave by the back door. Water is never allowed to stand on the floor. Spots are cleaned with a rag and water or Bona spray when they occur. I sweep the kitchen most days. There was an area of wear by the front door as well as a bathroom entrance that I had re treated a few years ago. Realize that I live in a snowy climate, so walking in with muddy boots is really rough on floor coverings.
My neighbors have a similar finish, ignore their floors, no upkeep in decades and I cringe when I see them. Worn to bare wood in many spots. But they enjoy their life, have people over more than I do, and it is only a floor, after all.
Timely subject, as I just bought prefinished hardwood for the attic redo in my new house.
The prefinished wood floor in my dining room doesn’t have a beveled edge but the one in my family room does.
We have hardwood floors that we put in over 24 years ago. We don’t allow water on it and are barefoot in our home but don’t do much else to care for them. They still look great.
^^I guess you don’t have a DH who put terra cotta planters on your bare wood floors! But our stairs are also in rough shape - they get a lot of wear and I guess we’ll get a runner once we fix them.
Our wood floors had Street Shoe put on them in 1994. We just had them finished this year for the first time. Really, the only area that absolutely needed to be redone was the kitchen. The rest of the first floor looked excellent.
We also don’t wear shoes or boots in the house. Vacuum weekly and sweep daily.
Oh…and no dogs! They really scratch up wood floors.
Well, we do have a dog. I would think that would make a higher-gloss finish more problematic.
Starting to lean toward engineered wood. The higher-quality ones can be sanded and refinished multiple times, they have no bevel (and apparently straight-edged prefinished wood can only be installed on a perfectly flat floor), and you can get wide planks without worrying about warping.
When I was deciding about flooring, one of the people who gave us estimates told me that the previously installed (staple-down) engineered flooring in our living room had been refinished once, and could be refinished a second time. But after that, I gather that we’d have to replace the flooring as there wouldn’t be enough of the surface layer left to refinish a third time. We decided to live with the scuffed surface and not refinish just yet.
We went with engineered floating flooring on the second floor. It is lovely, but it does have the bevels between the boards (I think that has something to do with it being snap-together).
There seems to be some confusion with engineered wood vs laminates like pergo. Engineered wood is indeed “plywood” in terms of construction, with multiple thin layers of solid wood layered at right angles to each other. It’s more stable than solid hardwood and the best choice for installing over a concrete slab.
What you want to look at with engineered wood is the thickness of the top layer. That will determine how many times it can be refinished. Engineered wood can range from terrible to great in quality (and price!). If I lived in a climate with wide swings in temperature and humidity it would certainly be my first choice.
You can get engineered in pre-finished, site-finished, floating, nailed-down, etc. A high-quality pre-finished should actually have a tougher finish than those finished onsite. I’ve heard some pre-finished are available with no bevels but that seems like a tricky proposition to install well. You can also get different sizes of bevels on the pre-finished.
Nothing quite beats the beautiful uniform look of a well-done site-finished job though. But be aware that you’re at the mercy of your installer when it comes to the quality of site-finished; it’s all too easy to screw up either the sanding or the finishing. If you go with site-finished be sure to write terms of inspection and satisfaction into the contract with a holdback on the final payment pending owner inspection and signoff.