Full Hardwood Floor Refinish in Edmonton
When the wood itself is worn through, stained, or you want a different colour, a full refinish takes the floor back to bare oak and builds the finish up again. It is the reset that makes a forty year old floor look new.
What a full refinish involves
We sand through the old finish and into the top layer of wood, taking out the scratches, the traffic paths, the pet stains, and whatever coating went on last. That happens in stages with progressively finer grit, with the edges and corners done separately by an edger and by hand, because a big machine cannot reach the last inch against a baseboard. Then the floor gets vacuumed and tacked, stained if you want a colour change, and built back up under several coats of finish.
Because bare wood is exposed at that point, the finish choice matters more than at any other stage. Water-based finishes dry fast, stay clear, and let you back into the room sooner. Oil-based finishes amber over time, take longer to cure, and smell like it. Neither is the right answer for every house, and we will walk through the tradeoff for how your rooms actually get used before you pick.
Can your floor take another sand
This is the question we get asked most and the one worth answering before you spend anything. A solid oak strip floor has a wear layer above the tongue and groove, and once that is gone the floor cannot be sanded again. Most 1960s and 1970s Edmonton floors have three quarter inch solid oak under them, which is a generous amount of wood, but the answer depends on how many times it has already been done and how aggressive those sands were.
We check rather than guess. Pulling a floor vent or a threshold gives a clean look at the edge of a board and tells us how much wood is left above the tongue. If the answer is that there is one sand left, we will tell you that, because it changes what you should do with it. And if the answer is that the floor is out of wood, we will say that too, even though it is not the job we would rather be quoting.
Dust, and living in the house while it happens
Sanding a floor makes dust. Machines with vacuum extraction capture most of it at the source, which is a very different experience from open sanding, but nothing takes it to zero and any company telling you otherwise is selling you something. We seal off the rooms that are not being worked on and explain where the dust will still get.
A full refinish is usually a few days including cure time, and the finished rooms are off limits while the coats harden. Plenty of people stay in the house and camp in the rooms that are not being done. Whether that works depends on your floor plan, and we will be straight with you about it at the quote rather than after the machines are in.
Other work we cover
Want a number before you talk to anyone? Read what hardwood floor refinishing costs in Edmonton.
Have us look at your floors in person.