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Dealing with the same old home mentioned previously, any of you peel back carpeting of an old home to find 80+ year old wood underneath? Did you attempt to repair/restore or just put a new wood floor on top to save some time?
There's some water damaged/missing pieces/gaps I will have to repair/remove/replace completely (was thinking I could take wood from the closet floors to use or hunt out similar salvaged wood to patch) and looking at things a friend of mine said "perhaps not worth your effort, you can just quickly patch and do new flooring on top and skip the whole repair/sanding/finishing process."
As a DIY guy who wants to save money...I'm tempted to restore. Your thoughts? If anyone did repair/restorative work on really old wooden floors, any tips and equipment recommendations?
If most of the original floor is in good shape I would never, ever cover over it.
Get a professional restoration company to look at it. A good company will be able to fix the small problems and sand & refinish. It would keep the integrity of the old home and style that a new floor could never do.
It really depends. "Professional restoration company" implies higher cost than "guys that install wood floors"... If the place ain't exactly a historic gem it very likely does not make economic sense to put a whole lot of labor into messed up floors. That said, even regular "guys that install wood floors" that are HONEST will tell you when it makes sense to re-use existing flooring...
So, I'm back with my similar house too... and yes, I have the original white oak floors through Most of my house. The prior owners (I curse them daily, even a year later, and expect that'll last another year easily) tried their hands at DIY refinishing.... it was bad. Actually, it was Worse than bad... the floors were dished all over the whole house (2000sq/ft), little lines where they set the sander down and then picked it up, moved a couple inches and repeated. Looked like the whole floor was rippled.... and looking into others who DIYed, this seemed to be a very common problem. Having done everything else (plaster repair, complete bathroom job to the studs, rebuilding the original windows right now), I hired out for the floors.
There were some other issues with my floors too... at some point the HVAC guys rerouted the ducts so I had double the holes in the floors (4 in my living room, only 2 were used ~ 2 in each bedroom where only one was used) and needed holes patched all over. Plus there were some other smaller issues that come with all flooring jobs, cracked floor boards, pet stains in some areas, etc... Anyway the father/son business I hired (dad had been doing it for 47 years, son for 20-something) patched and stained all the holes, fixed the glaring problem areas and did their best to remove the sander damage from the prior owners plus finished (no stain, just topcoat) in 3 days.
I still have pet stains (those never go away), and can sorta pick out where the patches are (but I know where to look), and am very happy with both my choice to go with the pros and the work they provided. You may not be as fortunate if someone has sanded the floors in your home enough that they can't be done again (the wood will crack on the groove side if too thin, leading to boards coming loose, splinters, etc..) You will *NOT* have a perfect, glossy, smooth floor. They couldn't fill the cracks between board in my house because the boards move too much, so each board has a dark outline where dirt has collected over the long years. In contrast to a 1950's one-owner house I bought (they had carpet the whole time), where when we pulled the carpet the floors looked immaculate and the topcoat was a solid surface... which is what Modern site-finished flooring looks like today.
If you do opt for laying new (pre-finished) hardwood though, that's an easy DIY job. I've done that as well and it was a quick, easy and painless job. I guess it all depends on what you want out of the home. I'm going for original/authentic as much as possible, so my choices may be different than yours.
Dealing with the same old home mentioned previously, any of you peel back carpeting of an old home to find 80+ year old wood underneath? Did you attempt to repair/restore or just put a new wood floor on top to save some time?
Yes I Have in 60 year old home, peeled back the carpet to find oak floors that still had the planer marks on them. Looks like they must of just did a quick coat of stain and covered them up with carpet for 50 years.
The biggest issue with them was high and low spots, they were never sanded after being installed. Took a lot of sanding to get them even, started out with drum sander and 20 grit. Even that was having difficulty removing enough material to get them even. From there I moved too a large vibratory sander through 2 or 3 grits. Think the last one was 120 grit. Finished the edges with palm sander and a few really low spots with the hand held belt sander. Took more than a week for 3 rooms and a hallway but that includes finishing it, think I was sanding for 4 days. The results were fantastic, the one guy putting in some electric asked where I purchased them.
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There's some water damaged
There was couple spots with staples that had black, what I did was hit them with round dremel tool and filled with wood putty. There was one larger spot about the size of quarter, I have a hard time finding it now. Stain and finish will cover up a lot of blemishes.
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If anyone did repair/restorative work on really old wooden floors, any tips and equipment recommendations?
For the finish I used water based poly, supposedly it''s not as durable as the regular poly but it's so easy to work with it's ridiculous. It goes on really easy and the odor is very minimal. First coat is not going to look that great, hit it really quick with the palm sander and repeat with two more coats.
So, I'm back with my similar house too... and yes, I have the original white oak floors through Most of my house. The prior owners (I curse them daily, even a year later, and expect that'll last another year easily) tried their hands at DIY refinishing.... it was bad. Actually, it was Worse than bad... the floors were dished all over the whole house (2000sq/ft), little lines where they set the sander down and then picked it up,
You need to be careful with the drum sander but it's really the best tool, you can always try starting out with vibratory sander like I did. That took about 10 minutes to realize it just wasn't going to cut it and was only going to be good for finishing after using the drum sander to get the bulk of it smooth.
I've refinished Southern Yellow Pine and it's really not hard. The stuff under the carpet was more of a pain (and not finished) because of all the tack strips laid along the edges, and the lower moldings had been removed.
I've done both stain/poly and shellac. I'm sanding my previous stain/poly rooms and re-shellacing as the poly just didn't hold up to the cats running around over the years. Shellac is easier to repair than poly.
I admit I'm sanding the hard way though, using a small orbital sander.
My house was built in 1926 and has hardwood throughout, including all closets, bathroom and kitchen. And I take back what I said about the carpet - what was under the linoleum was the absolute pits. Took months to scrape the paper off the floor under the linoleum and plywood.
S. Yellow Pine is considerably softer than other flooring options. Janka Wood Hardness Scale As such, that has some 'good news' like the fact it can be sanded smooth rather quickly by somebody that knows what they are doing, "bad news" -- it is easy to gouge /dent / over sand, and regardless of the "film toughness" of poly (which is orders of magnitude stronger than shellac. BTW, I would not recommend shellac if there is any chance of moisture from kitchen, alcohol from dining / living area, or even a concern over the gloss finish on any longer section of flooring -- The Differences Between Shellac and Polyurethane, Varnish and Lacquer - Wood Menders
I admit I'm sanding the hard way though, using a small orbital sander.
Pine is probably not something you want to use drum sander on, on the other hand with the floors I had you literally would have been there for a month with orbital sander.
Honestly you'd have to be crazy not to rent some kind of large sander if the room is of any size, you can rent it for about $50 a day. The place we were at gave us bunch of half used sandpaper as well, we went through that and some more. You can probably figure another $50 to $100 on sandpaper per room.
One other thing, this is very dusty job as you might expect. Definitely not a job to during cold weather, open a window and put a fan in it pointing out.
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FYI I never used a drum sander before this, what I found to work best was to slightly start it in motion and set the drum onto the wood. Let the machine pull itself forward but you want to make sure that if it hesitates you are there to keep it going. You can ruin a floor really quick with that machine but if you need to remove a lot of material it's the only thing that is going to do it.
Pine is probably not something you want to use drum sander on, on the other hand with the floors I had you literally would have been there for a month with orbital sander.
Honestly you'd have to be crazy not to rent some kind of large sander if the room is of any size, you can rent it for about $50 a day. The place we were at gave us bunch of half used sandpaper as well, we went through that and some more. You can probably figure another $50 to $100 on sandpaper per room.
One other thing, this is very dusty job as you might expect. Definitely not a job to during cold weather, open a window and put a fan in it pointing out.
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FYI I never used a drum sander before this, what I found to work best was to slightly start it in motion and set the drum onto the wood. Let the machine pull itself forward but you want to make sure that if it hesitates you are there to keep it going. You can ruin a floor really quick with that machine but if you need to remove a lot of material it's the only thing that is going to do it.
I have friends who refinished floors for a living in college and they still have all their equipment. There are a couple of reasons I'm doing it by hand:
I had stained and poly'd the sunroom, dining room and living room in the 90s. I didn't then realize that shellac darkens with increased coverage so that's why I had put stain down - when I cleaned the shellac off the floors were too light for my liking. I moved to the front hall next and really messed that up with the stain and kind of got stuck trying to figure out what to do with it. Then I removed the linoleum etc in the kitchen in the early 2000s and that floor was pretty beat up. Fast forward to the late 2000s and the living room is really a mess, I didn't like the semi-gloss in the dining room and the kitchen and hall were just - well not done.
That's basically every single piece of flooring in the downstairs.
The previous owners removed french doors that were in each living room doorway, so the only rooms I can close off completely are the kitchen and sunroom. The living room leads to the hall which leads to upstairs. I have cats, and while I only have one skittish cat now, 5 years ago I had some ferals that wouldn't take kindly to being herded into the basement. Then I'd have all the furniture to deal with (I use my dining room as a workshop so that's even worse).
In 2007 or 8, a friend convinced me to try sanding the kitchen, so we pulled an all nighter. We did the kitchen AND got all the stain off the hall floor. I put cheap canned shellac on them but that didn't really last long, but it at least showed me it could be done. By late 2008 I was divorced and redoing the house (and remember those cats!). I resanded the kitchen and hall and mixed up my own shellac and finished them up. A couple years later I really went to town in the living room and finally finished my inital sanding. I still have to paint the room, do a finish sand and shellac.
Now upstairs, the only room I'd done before was the bathroom. This time I just cleaned the floors and reshellaced and they came out awesome. No sanding needed. Damn my ignorant 1990s self! I still have 2 rooms to do but it was so much easier and quicker.
It's definitely taken me a lot longer but it's less disruptive to the household (cats and furniture moving) and my work scheduled is a little crazy. I'm not tied to "having" to finish all in one shot (though at time I think it would be a nice thing lol). When I move, I can do a quick top coat and they'll look like new again. Shellac does have a deep shine if you want to wax, and I'm pretty sure there's an agent you can put it for a higher gloss as well.
And ya, even with the little sander plugged into a shop vac, it still makes a lot of dust!
Attached are pix of the office and hall. Kitchen is in the hall pic, but it hadn't been shellacked yet. Don't know if they were my last coats, but pretty close. The reason there are 2 unfinished boards in the office is that those are 16' boards that run to the back of the house into another room that I haven't done yet. I found it was better to do it by the board rather than trying to blend across a board at a doorway.
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Stain and finish will cover up a lot of blemishes. 
