Finding Flooring For A Beautiful Home

Different Ways To Refinish Hardwood

27 July 2017 by Janet Robinson

The floor is one of the most important style features of the entire home. If smartly chosen, a a hardwood flooring product can define the room style and bring everything together. Many people love hardwood floors because it is a material that can match with everything from furniture, decorations, to the walls. One of the best things about hardwood flooring is that you can change the style quite easily. Most hardwood floors can be refinished with a relatively simple sand and stain procedure. This article explains how to refinish hardwood.

Can Your Hardwood Be Refinished

First, you need to determine whether or not your hardwood is the type that can be refinished. Some hardwoods have multi-layered construction. This means the actual planks are made out of thin layers of wood that are glued together. Only the top layer is actually made out of hardwood. If this top layer is too thin, it can be hard to refinish it. That is, you cannot always sand off the stain without diminishing too much of the wood and exposing the layer beneath. As long as your top layer is 1/8" or thicker, you should be able to refinish it at least once. If it is any thinner than 1/8", it might not be worth the risk of doing a full sand and stain refinish. You also have option of just applying a new layer of stain on top of your floor as it is. This is really only useful if you are going to stain your floor the same color that it already is.

Sanding the Floor

Refinishing hardwood is a process that requires intense sanding with handheld power sanders or stand up drum sanders. Drum sanders are definitely more convenient for larger jobs and they can be rented from most home improvement stores. Using handheld sanders is really only practical if you have three or four people working at once.

Actually applying the stain to your floor is a very simple process and there are many ways to do it. Just rubbing the stain onto the floor with rags is one of the most efficient methods. Staining is still time consuming because you usually need to apply several coats and wait for the stain to completely dry before each coat. Furthermore, you need to use steel wool to buff out the surface and make it smooth after each coat dries.

Refinishing your hardwood is a very cost efficient upgrade. It will completely redefined the look of the room and help to further protect and preserve your wood. 

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