Refinishing floors yourself or hiring professionals
If your floors look worse for the wear with scuffed finish and scratched surfaces, you may feel tempted to replace them and be done with it. However, hardwood with healthy structure doesn’t require such drastic measures and you can save plenty of time and money, deciding on floor refinishing. At that point, question usually arises whether you should take care of the task yourself or hire experienced flooring contactors. After all DIY cannot be that difficult and it’s cheaper, right? Not exactly. Pros charge from $3 to $5 per square foot of refinished floor. However, just renting a sanding machine for a day, you would pay around $200. Add cost of tools and materials and it puts flooring contractors’ bill into perspective. There is also an issue of possible mistakes on your part, which may result in irreparable damage to your beautiful hardwood floors.
Hardwood floor refinishing step-by-step
If you’re determined to refinish floors yourself, first clean them with wet mop, so no debris or loose particles will be left behind. Only then, you can begin sanding. During the whole process wear protective gear and make sure that rooms are well ventilated. In areas that are difficult to sand off with power tools, use soft grade sandpaper. During the process, sanding machine will suck most of the dust nevertheless after completing it. You have to vacuum floors and wipe floors and walls with damp cloth to remove any remnants of sawdust. When everything is clean, you may apply stain. That stage is optional but enables to alter hardwood floor appearance. Sanded would stripped of protective coatings is prone to damage, so at the last stage, you need to apply protective treatment. Depending on the desired effects and product resistance, you can go for polyurethane (most popular but highly toxic), varnish or sealer.
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