Floors refinished
Written by julio on March 10th, 2005
We got the floors refinished just before moving in. This is one of about three things that we did hire out. Floor refinishing is an art, and it’s not one that you want to practice on 1,000 square feet of your own wood floors.
The floors in this house are continuous through the entire downstairs, even into the closets. That means that you have to do all of it at once to keep it looking right, as there are no transitions between rooms.
We opted to have them refinished without a stain, because we thought that the lighter color would help offset the dark woodwork. In the end, we feel that we made the right choice.
7
AM
We are thinking of doing the same with our original floors upstairs (no staining). Can I ask what kind of wood these floors are?
7
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They are oak floors, original to the house.
26
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I have a question for you guys. When you refer to the floor being original to the house, are you referring to the subfloor? I just purchased a 1916 craftsman bungalow in CA and I am contemplating refinishing the original floor which, is the subfloor. Is this common to do?
26
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John,
Around here it is very common to see a single layer of fir. Some houses, like ours, had thin (maybe 3/8″ – never measured it) top-nailed oak installed over the fir subfloor. According to a knowledgeable flooring guy that had bid on our refinishing, the oak was probably added in the 20′s, at least a decade after our house was built.
As a sidenote, we both love the look of fir floors, but are very grateful to have oak. Our kids and dogs would shred the fir in no time.
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I’ve recently come across your blog and am truly enjoying it. We live in Missouri, but doing similar work to our home, however, we are not quite as far along as you are. Anyhow, question about flooring. We are also having our main level floors refinished; keeping the natural color to contrast the dark woodwork in the rest of the house. My question for you is stairs. Did you guys stain your stairs to match the woodwork or keep natural like the floors? Do you happen to have pics? Thanks,
Tiffany in St. Louis
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Tiffany,
We haven’t yet done anything to our stairs. We recently pulled the carpeting off some of them, and they were originally stained dark. They look good that way, and I think I like it better than if they were natural. Another consideration for us is that the woods are different, so it may not be possible to match the look anyway.
Julio