I recently purchased an older home that has beautiful hardwood floors. They are in good condition and have no scratches, but the wood is dull. What is the best way to restore the luster without having to refinish? Any suggestions? Thanks
Stain and/or polyurethane, depends how dull.
Edit: In addition, if there is already a coat of polyurethane or wax that isn’t entirely worn down and you want more color (stain) instead of just more sheen (polyurethane), you’ll have to do a full refinish by sanding.
A nice coat of poly sounds like the way to go. That would clear up the dullness and add some protection. Could be a easy fix if the floor is in good shape.
What if the floors have some scratches on them? I have a home we are considering purchasing that has the original beautiful woodwork and hardwood floors. Some of the hardwood and woodwork is scratched. Can this be easily fixed?
There are no hardwood floor police so fixing scratches isn’t mandatory. But if you want it to look good, the SOP is to sand the floors down until all the scratches are gone. You start with a very coarse sandpaper (lowest grit) and gradually move up to a higher grit for a smoother surface. After you clean that up, it’s time to stain.
If you don’t want to start from scratch (pun intended), you can put about 30 coats of polyurethane and you will hardly notice the scratches. The floors could also double as an ice rink… without the ice.
If you’ve got deep scratches in the woodwork that can’t just be sanded down without disfiguring the pieces, you can use a wood filler if you plan on painting it. Otherwise you’d have to replace it.
It’s easily fixed if your not doing the work or have very strong arms!
What kind of paint and what are the best colors for heavy traffic? I painted one floor and it was a little to dark and shows dirt.
Thanks
If I painted floors and I wanted to hide the dirt, I would paint them the same shade of brown as the local dirt. You could save yourself some money and just throw mud around the interior.
The grain of wood breaks up shapes to your eye which hides everything. Military camoflauge is a good example of this. I’d forget about painting the floors and sand them down for stain and polyurethane. If it’s a really low end house, carpet works great.
If the flooring has the original varnish or shellac, you’d need to sand to bare wood and refinish. Been there, done that. Lots of work and dust but the results are beautiful especially with old growth wood floors.
If the floor was more recently refinished with urethane, you can have the floor “screened” and recoated. This basically scuffs the poly finish enough to be recoated.
Every one has been giving some good advice here but if you take the easy way that some have listed, “just put a coat of poly” make sure you know what the original finsih was.
If you have true old hardwood floors or woodwork that has shellac as the finish certain water based or alcohol based products placed over a shellac finish leaving you with a sticky mess and more work than what you started with.
How much does refinishing hardwoods average a floor, Do I call contractors or carpetmen? Thanks
How many times/ways will you be asking this?
It is considered impolite to ‘hi-jack’ someone else’s thread with your own question , especially since you have your own thread asking this same question right below this.
Keith
Moderator
If your Not looking for perfect floors But just want to make them POP again>
A good few coats of Slow dry Poly usualy works well to fill in many small scratch marks> as You can apply the slow dry in much heavier coats than fast dry
In many cases where the floor is showing small stains or such I have put oil base stain right in the Poly coat to tint it the way I like
This is only good to do for the first coat when covering small stains ETC>
This is also how I get rid of most pet stains> as you can sand those until your blue in the face they don’t come out, however a dark tint in the poly will usualy make them much harder to see
Caution should be used to do a test area first> say in a closet?
These are quick fixes to bring some pop back to an old floor that doesn’t need to be sanded
I tend to screen all my floors before I do anything to them as it helps Bind the poly making the job last much longer.
Hope that helps
I had some good results with cleaning the old wood with deck cleaners and water, poly once the floors are dry. It is less work as compared to sanding and I preserve the wood too.