If sanding, staining, and finishing hardwood floors is not your genius, help us help you! Refinishing hardwood flooring is a task best left to your expert flooring contractor. As you know if you’ve read any of our other web content, we have a motto for DIY project folks. Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should, people! If you want to do something yourself, try painting a wall before you rent a sanding machine. Just saying. And we recognize that we are not geniuses at everything, either. We hire a tax accountant. We hire a professional website developer. We don’t do those things ourselves because it’s not in our wheelhouse. Lucky for you, hardwood floor refinishing is our genius!
Homeowners aren’t always certain about the process and cost of refinishing hardwood. Refinishing your wood floor is less expensive than ripping it out to install a new one, just in material costs alone. If your budget is a concern to you, call our Certified Professional Sales Advisor for a phone consultation. It’s quick and easy and won’t cost you a dime to discuss the details. Providing you with some basic information, including price and timeframe, helps us help you.
While there are quite a few aspects that go into refinishing hardwood floors, the basics are simple. Your estimate will include price and timeframe. Our per-square-foot price starts at $6.50 for our National Wood Flooring Association Certified Professionals to sand, fill, color, and finish your wood floors. There might be other aspects of the project that are of interest to you, like installing flush mount vent registers. Expect to pay more for items like those because they’re not included in the square footage price. There are many custom treatments we can provide as well, from wire brushing to hand scraping to cerusing to bleaching or dyeing your hardwood floors. Depending on the species of wood, some of those custom treatments will give you a completely unique, even longer-lasting floor. We can also apply oils that can be maintained by you, the homeowner.
Although most of our refinishing projects are not extremely time-consuming, homeowners usually want to know how long we are in their home. We estimate one day of sanding work per 300 square feet of flooring, so if you have about 500 square feet of existing hardwood floors, you’d be looking at about 2 days of sanding work, then one day for color and one to two days for finish, depending on the type of finish applied, whether it’s a polyurethane finish or penetrating oil. Because our work is quite labor-intensive, we do not work on weekends. Our timeframe estimates include business days only and you are welcome to live in your home the entire time with the understanding that our machines can be noisy. All of our sanding equipment has vacuums and dust containment and we wipe down all horizontal surfaces and vacuum in your vent registers to ensure our colorants and finishes are free of debris.
Because we offer so many customized treatments for your floors, the best thing to do is have a phone consultation with our Certified Professional Wood Floor Sales Advisor. As the saying goes, “Measure twice, cut once.” With oil-based stains, water-borne dyes, custom colorants, and all types of finish, the key is not the product. What matters is the conversation, because that’s how we match your color and finish with your lifestyle to guarantee your satisfaction. We won’t make the decision for you, but we will make recommendations based on your cabinets, wall colors, and trim, including your handrail (unless you want us to replace that as well, which is also part of our genius).
Keep in mind that you will have the opportunity to see samples of color and finish during the estimate as well as applied directly to your floor. Our built samples are about 2′ x 2′ and range from bleached to nearly black, with and without texture, and include a variety of finishes for your review. That doesn’t mean you’ll always see the perfect color during the onsite consultation but that is just the beginning of your experience. If you’re not sure what you want, check out Houzz.com or Pinterest. They’re the best social media platforms for remodeling images. Sometimes visiting home improvement stores can also give you an idea of floor color concepts.
The best place to ask all of your questions about your refinishing job is when we are in your home during the consultation. There are no silly questions! We’ve had homeowners ask if they should wear a dust mask, if we break out labor costs (no), or if we use low-VOC products. We’ve also had people ask if they can try to run our floor sanders to help us out. Nope! Trust the experts. You’re in good hands.
One important question that usually comes up: who is responsible for moving furniture? Because we specialize in the installation and refinishing of solid hardwood floors, we respectfully request that you hire movers or complete that work yourself. We will advise you as to how to (carefully!) move your furniture back into place.
Our line of work is costly to insure and adding to the scope of our insurance by moving furniture would price us out of the marketplace. If you find a contractor who is willing to move your furniture, be sure to take a look at their liability insurance and workers compensation insurance so you know that your furniture and your home is protected from damage or a potential injury lawsuit. Moving furniture is also something of a logistical nightmare for scheduling projects because we would need to return a few days later as recommended by our finish manufacturers to move everything back into your home.
Depending on your choices, prices and timeframes can vary to refinish floors. Once you narrow down the scope of work, we will give specifics about what exactly will happen each day of your project. Our crew is in your home, and only your home, until the final coat of polyurethane is applied. While this process can be loud and sometimes smelly, we try to disrupt your life as little as possible.
If we are part of a larger remodeling project, be sure to check with us as to when we fit into the project. Remember, we do this work every day and are licensed for hardwood floor refinishing in states that mandate it. We cannot cut corners or we could lose our professional certifications. Every homeowner has heard horror stories about remodeling. Some of you have experienced those situations firsthand. We understand it’s tough to trust contractors. That’s why we put everything in writing and manage your expectations ahead of time. All of our employees know that we request reviews from homeowners on each project and their goal is to treat each home in which they work as if it were their own