Protecting Hardwood Floors - Tips from a Mom!

Now that the snow is mostly gone in NH, we’re starting to get calls from homeowners planning to put their homes on the market this spring. While it is relatively easy to spruce your home up with a new coat of paint, one of the most challenging questions is value vs costs of refinishing those wood floors? It is a costly and lengthy (full week, described below) process to sand and refinish hardwood floors.

We’re sad to see one of our long standing customers leave the area, but she is smart to getting started now. We’ll be out there Sunday, after they leave for the airport for winter break “away from the cold,” to move all the furniture in prep for floor refinishing to start on Monday. The fun part of this conversation was how to protect the floors when the kids come  home? I recommended buying fun kids slippers to motivate her 2 young boys to wear them after the floors are refinished.

Dirty Sneakers

Monster Slippers

Steps involved in refinishing hardwood floors

• Move all furniture, leaving room for family members to navigate through the house
• Put up plastic across door openings to minimize dust escaping during sanding process.
• Sand floors carefully to remove wear but leave enough wood for future repairs
• As needed, restain floors to desired color
• Apply three (3) or more coats of polyurethane to floors, allowing each coat to dry overnight before applying the next coat
• Wait a minimum of 48 hours before moving furniture back in
• Move furniture back to original positions.