When it comes to flooring, it’s hard to beat wood.
Wood floors are timeless, elegant and bring warmth to the home. They are also incredibly durable and can for last decades, if not longer. Wood flooring is also easy to clean and maintain. For these reasons, wood flooring is the first choice for many homeowners.
There are also other benefits to having wood floors that become apparent over time. Other types of flooring often require replacement whenever they fall into disrepair or begin to show their age. Wood flooring can be refinished and brought back to its original beauty. However, refinishing is not the right choice for every wood floor. Here are a few things to consider before refinishing your wood floors.
How Many Times the Floor Has Been Refinished
One of the great things about wood flooring is the fact that it can be refinished more than once.
The process of refinishing a wood floor is relatively simple. The floor is sanded in order to remove the current finish, and then a new layer of finish is applied. This process can bring floors that have seen better days back to life. However, it’s important to consider how many times the floor has been refinished in the past.
There are a finite amount of times that a wood floor can be refinished.
Solid hardwoods can often be refinished six or seven times without issue. However, if the nails are visible and the tongue and grooves on the boards no longer fit together, the floors may not be able to be refinished. Floors that have been sanded aggressively during past refinishing projects often have these problems.
The Type of Wood Flooring
When it comes to refinishing, the type of wood flooring is key.
Solid hardwood floors are the best candidates for refinishing. As mentioned before, they can be refinished six or seven times without any problems. Some solid hardwoods can even hold up to more refinishing.
Engineered wood flooring only has a layer of hardwood over a plywood base.
Engineered wood floors can only be refinished once or twice. Laminate floors, which look like wood but aren’t actually wood, cannot be refinished at all.
The Number of Damaged Boards
The great thing about refinishing wood flooring is that most floors can be refinished without any major issues.
For floors with boards that cannot be salvaged, a full floor replacement is not necessary. Instead, these damaged boards can be removed and replaced with new boards that are stained to match the rest of the floor.
It’s also important to consider the number of damaged boards present when determining whether or not refinishing is the right choice.
If there is a significant amount of boards or planks that need to removed and replaced, replacement may be a better choice than refinishing. This is often the case with wood floors that have significant water damage. Sometimes a floor is better off being replaced.
The Structure Underneath
Another thing to consider is the structure underneath the wood flooring.
If there are major structural problems underneath the floors, then removing the floors will likely be necessary. Whenever the subfloor or anything else under the wood floor needs to be replaced, refinishing is not going to be an option unless only a small and easily replaced portion of the floor needs to be removed.
If you are thinking about refinishing your wood floors, we are here to help. We can help you decide whether refinishing your wood flooring is the right choice or if replacement is the better option. We also offer custom wood flooring and wood-flooring installation.