Has your hardwood floor seen better days? Rather than replace it, refinish it to make it look like a brand new floor that has just been installed. Refinishing solid hardwood flooring in Boston may seem like a good DIY project; however, the smallest mistake could damage the floor beyond repair and that’s why it should be left to the pros at Boston Hardwood Floor Refinishing
The Boston Hardwood Floor expert starts by clearing the room, this includes curtains and pictures, and take off or protect register covers. Also remove doors and shoe moulding. Test the floors by drilling in nails, remove any carpet staples underneath as these fasteners will tear the paper on the floor sanders. Sanding gets really dusty, unless you are using our dustless sanding service so cover the air vents, lights, windows, and doorways with plastic.With the room prepped you’re ready to sand.
We use a random orbital sander for flat floors. It’s easier to handle and the random sanding pattern won’t leave directional scratches on the floor. We load coarse grit sandpaper into the machine, fire it up, and begin moving over the floor surface. Letting it run in one spot will damage the floor as we do not want to sand more than we have to. It’s easiest to work along the grain to see where you’ve sanded. When the wood floor refinishing technician gets to the end of the room, they would move over slightly overlapping the first pass by a few inches. Continue sanding, getting close to the edges.
After sanding the centre of the room, do the edges using a power hand sander with the same grit paper. In the corners, we use a detail sander.
After sanding, vacuum thoroughly with a brush attachment.
"Refinish Before You Replace"
To determine if your floor needs to be refinished, place a few drops of water on it. If it soaks in slowly over a few minutes, you can probably just clean and polish. If the water soaks in immediately, you’ll need to refinish. Also, if your floor is damaged, stained, or there’s wax over the finish, you’ll need to sand to bare wood.
Deep holes and cavities need to be filled with a wood filler material.
Using a pencil, we mark out the edges of the room really helps to see where we’ve sanded, as the sander removes the pencil marks. For the second pass with the sander, we use a medium grit sandpaper and a medium grit paper with the hand sander along the edges, and the detail sander for the corners. Using a vacuum and brush attachment we clean up the dust.
Time for a third pass with fine grit sandpaper, this will be the final sanding pass. Afterwards, vacuum thoroughly with a brush attachment. Also use a damp mop on the floor to pick up any remaining particles. After sanding, the floor is buffed further with a screen to smoothen out fine scratches. Boston Hardwood Floor Refinishing would use a sanding screen for the edges and corners too. Finish up with a thorough cleaning—window sills, walls, everything. Finally, we would go over the floor with a cloth dampened with mineral spirits.
Hardwood Floor Staining is only needed if you want to change the floor colour. Apply a pre-stain conditioner and stain the surface. If you’re not staining, we apply a sanding sealer before the polyurethane finish. Let it dry, then lightly sand with 320-grit sandpaper. Vacuum the entire room again and clean the floor with a tack cloth. It’s important to have a dust free floor.
We Complete the Hardwood Floor Refinishing project by applying a polyurethane finish with a natural bristle brush and applicator. Before using the applicator remove loose fibres with tape. We Stir the poly thoroughly, no shaking! -Which is a mistake that most hardwood floor refinishing contractors in Boston do- then we apply it along the edges using smooth strokes. We don’t want any bubbles. For the center of the floor, we use the applicator and always maintain a wet edge and avoid creating bubbles. Let the poly dry according to the directions and apply a second coat. Some products don’t require sanding between coats. After the second coat has dried for a few days, you can reattach shoe moulding and bring your furniture back into the room. Avoid sliding it across the floor. Felt pads can help prevent scratches too.