CallieBarcellos's Profile

I'm married to a professional hardwood floor technician and I can't imagine anyone doing all that work themselves (without proper tools and skill)!!! But I may be biased :) but this "tutorial" of sorts definitely left out a lot of steps and if you were to follow it I don't think you'd be too happy with your floor. Not that anyone would probably attempt this just going off AT here. But yeah. My suggestion would be to always leave it to the professionals. Again. A bit biased. But there is A LOT of work and skill that you just can't fake.

@elaneb - you can TOTALY have your floors done while living in the house. 90% of our jobs have been refinishes where the family is living in the house. A couple things you want to look for in your flooring guy would be "dustless sanding". And make sure they have the trailer mounted vacuum system. It's the only TRULY dustless system (a lot of companies use vacuum systems that don't do that great of a job but with the trailer the vacuum is 25hp and outside the home so it is 100% dustless. Seriously. And also make sure your contractor uses water based finishes. These dry in a couple of hours (rather than days) and have very little non toxic fumes. These two things should be standard in the flooring industry and any contractor that doesn't use dustless and water based is just behind the times :) our company obviously does and if you happen to be in the Portland area we do free estimates!! Shameless plug :) www.barcelloshardwoodfloors.com

And refinishing would always be cheaper. With new wood you would pay for the wood plus demo of the old floor AND sanding and coating the new wood besides. With refinishing you're just paying that sanding and finishing. Even if you go with pre-finished wood you'd still have to pay to demo the old floor. An at least in our area pre finished is more per square foot that our company charges to refinish. So unless you went cheap-o laminate, definitely refinish. Your flooring contractor should be able to replace a few boards too if it's just an isolated area that has nail holes.

^super long essay of a comment...I'm done now.