How To Clean Up After Refinishing Wood Floors
So you lot're thinking almost refinishing your hardwood floors. So exciting! I remember that aforementioned feeling of joy when we fabricated the decision to exercise so. However, going into it I had NO clue what the process would actually entail. Male child, did I learn a lot nearly hardwood flooring refinishing! There are and then many considerations yous need to think near once you decide you're going to refinish your hardwood floors. Will you use a contractor or tackle the projection yourself? What stain color and sheen practise you like best? Will the stain color jive with your furniture and decor style? Speaking of article of furniture, where will y'all put it all when the work is being done? The fumes will be strong and the floors will need time to cure. Will you stay with family unit or friends during that time? How tin y'all best prep your habitation to brand the post-project clean-upward easier?
I'm sharing ALL of these learnings in this hardwood floor refinishing guide. That way yous can spend less time figuring out the details and more time getting excited about how beautiful your floors are going to await!
Hardwood Flooring Refinishing Guide
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While there are a lot of decisions you volition demand to make, it volition truly exist worth it. When we moved into our domicile, our oak floor had that orangey tint that we lived with for about a year before we refinished them. While I don't have a great "before" photo of our floors, you can get a sense of the original colour and our new color from the photos beneath. Refinishing our floors dramatically transformed the entire look of our house!
Aside from our bathrooms, we had every inch of our floors refinished in our dwelling. That meant that we basically had to pack up our entire house, every bit if we were moving. Since it was our start time ever refinishing hardwood floors, we learned a lot near how to all-time gear up, and what to do after the floors have been refinished. But as important, we also learned what we'd practice differently next time around. All of these details are here in this guide.
Contractor or DIY?
My husband is incredibly handy and we rarely hire contractors for business firm projects (and while it's a big coin-saver, the downside to that is that updates go made more than slowly in our home). However, refinishing hardwood floors was not a projection my husband felt comfortable taking on. While I won't become into the details, the first company we hired to refinish our floors sanded waves into our hardwood floors, which required united states to hire some other company to set up. And so this prolonged the amount of time nosotros remained out of our home.
Waves tin can occur for a number of reasons. These include poor sanding technique, improperly installed paper on a floor sander, a poorly maintained machine, or a bad pulsate. Although less common, loose boards or tight knots in the woods can also contribute to waves, and softer woods crave a different sanding technique all together.
So my bespeak is, unless you take deep noesis on all of the to a higher place or know that the sanding machine you lot are renting from your local home center has been properly maintained, my recommendation is to a hire professional. Hardwood floors are too expensive to run a risk damaging yourself. If by some rare chance the contractor that you hire makes a mistake (like in our example), they will be on the hook to make information technology correct – not yous.
Stain Choice
The biggest question I most frequently see asked is in regard to stain color choice. It's a huge selection and one that seems so permanent. Unless of course y'all fork over more greenbacks to accept the floors restained if you finish up regretting your determination. Even and then, keep in listen that a solid hardwood plank at least 3/4 inches thick tin can on average simply be refinished 4 to six times during its total lifespan. It's common in high-traffic areas of your home to have to refinish them every seven to x years. Especially if you lot have pets! So just know that there are limits to how many times your floors tin can exist sanded. So cull your stain colour wisely. 🙂
Some points to keep in mind when selecting a color:
- Darker floors show every spec of grit, every nibble and all pet hair. And then if you have kids, pets and/or your husband is a messy eater, you may want to consider a lighter stain.
- Lighter stain colors tin can make a room look brighter and larger if the rooms in your dwelling are small.
- Stains take differently on different types of wood due to the natural variances in wood'southward undertones. For example, birch wood has a slight pink undertone and poplar skews more greenish. Scarlet oak every bit you guessed has blood-red undertones, and white oak is the most neutral of them all.
- If you're having a difficult time deciding on color, have your contractor apply the stains in your consideration ready once they've sanded your floors. This will also enable you to meet how the stain takes to the verbal type of wood that you accept. Our contractor was willing to apply up to half-dozen colors and we had until the next morning to decide. You'll see in the photo beneath, that our contractor also applied polyurethane to a portion of each stain sample so we could get a feel for what it would really look like when finished. This was incredibly helpful since polyurethane adds richness to the stain.
- Accept your furniture, dwelling decor, and the paint colors on your walls and cabinetry into consideration when selecting a color. Light colors tin contrast beautifully confronting darker floors. However, if the rest of your interior is already dark, I'd recommend steering away from a dark floor color.
We ultimately decided on Minwax Dark Walnut (bottom left in the image above) and I couldn't be happier with our decision. While I love the airiness of light floors in a littoral home, a medium-dark floor is timeless. The night walnut we chose likewise provides great contrast against our white kitchen cabinetry and light walls.
Finish Considerations
- When refinishing hardwood floors, you lot'll need to determine if you're going to use a matte, satin or a semi-gloss polyurethane. This mainly comes downwardly to personal gustatory modality, but matte and satin are the most popular choices right at present. Keep in heed that the sheen tin play a large role in what's visible on the flooring. The more matte you go, the fewer scratches, dents, and dirt that show. Nosotros personally opted for a satin finish, which has slightly more sheen than a matte finish. This terminate reflects but a very small corporeality of light so it doesn't distract from our decor.
- Be prepared to make a determination on using a h2o, or an oil-based polyurethane. Both have their pros and cons that you should take into consideration. The biggest benefit of a water-based polyurethane is that it'due south depression scent and dries much faster than an oil-based polyurethane. This will certainly limit the time that your rooms or your home is out of committee. Information technology also has lower VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds) so it's a safer choice if at that place is a baby or a pregnant family member in your domicile. However, the downside is that water-based polyurethane is significantly more expensive. It also has a duller expect to information technology and it's not equally durable. My recommendation is to go with an oil-based for looks and immovability, despite the stronger odor and longer dry out time.
Practice you Need to Vacate Your Home?
This really depends – are you lot refinishing just one or ii rooms, or an entire house as we did? If it's just a room or 2, and you can close the space off from the rest of the house to lessen the fumes and smell, you might exist fine to stay in your dwelling house while the piece of work is being done.
If you're refinishing your entire house and using an oil-based polyurethane, that's a different story. You'll need to arrange to exist out of the house for at least a week while the work is being done and the floors are curing. Even after the floors were safety to walk on, nosotros still found the odor to be unbearable for a couple of weeks. Requite yourself actress fourth dimension to air out the business firm so you don't become featherbrained from the fumes.
Preparing Your Home for the Project
I wish someone had given us a few of the pieces of advice I'm about to give you, every bit it would have saved the states from many headaches. So accept notes! 🙂
- As you would guess, remove all article of furniture and items from your rooms. This should include anything on the walls, window treatments and everything from your closet shelves as well. We thought that as long equally everything was off the closet floor and out of the contractor's way it would exist fine. We wrapped anything we kept on our shelves in plastic, non fully realizing how much odour our clothes and other items would blot. Certain, that's fine if you don't mind running your clothes through the launder but at the very least remove anything that would demand to be dry-cleaned or you'll be in for an expensive dry-cleaning bill.
- Remove all food from your pantry and kitchen as they tin blot vapors from polyurethane.
- Place painters tape or a low-adhesive tape along your baseboards and on your stair'due south risers to preclude stain from getting on them. While you lot nevertheless may demand to touch on upward a few spots on your baseboards and risers one time your floors have been refinished, painters tape volition minimize the corporeality of impact-ups needed.
- To ensure grit doesn't get into all of the crevices of your lighting fixtures, utilize masking film to cover them. You lot'll be happy that you have ane less matter to make clean in each room.
- If yous're merely having certain rooms refinished, tape the masking film to the doorways to contain the dust and prevent it from floating into other areas of your home.
- This may be obvious, just remove all pets from the work area. Not only to ensure they don't run across moisture floors, merely to protect them from the potent fumes.
Cure Fourth dimension & Odor Elimination
Hardwood floor refinishing requires some patience and fresh air to reduce the the odor.
- At a minimum, you lot should look at to the lowest degree 24 hrs earlier walking on the floors; for hours 24-48, it'south best to vesture socks only (no shoes, no bare feet). Ideally, you should wait a total of four-7 days earlier moving any furniture or rugs dorsum.
- Continue windows and doors open up equally much as possible to reduce the smell of the polyurethane fumes. Employ large fans to pull in fresh air and push air out. I recommend scheduling this project for the summer, fall or leap, unless you are OK with a hefty heating bill. 🙂
- Employ an air purifier such as this BlueAir Blueish Pure 211+ model to assistance remove the odor acquired by the VOCs institute in polyurethane.
Post Project Clean-upwardly
Even if the company y'all rent to refinish your floors touts a "dustless" procedure – there will still be dust. Just less dust. 🙂 After refinishing hardwood floors, be prepared to thoroughly vacuum and wipe down every last surface. This includes every foursquare inch of your walls.
I highly recommend a vacuum with a new filter, too as these microfiber cloths. I employ these cloths constantly for everyday cleaning, but they were especially helpful for removing grit after we had our floors refinished. The dust clings right to them, and it makes the clean-upwardly become so much faster!
If you placed painters tape on your baseboards as per my recommendation, you shouldn't need too many paint touch-ups. However, if you practise require a touch up or ii, make sure to lay down masking paper to reduce your risk of paint getting on your newly refinished floors.
Cleaning Your Hardwood Floors
Subsequently refinishing hardwood floors, you lot'll want to await a minimum of two weeks before applying any cleaner as they are still curing. Nonetheless, my accented favorite cleaner is Bona's Hardwood Floor Cleaning Spray. We initially bought their Flooring Care Kit, which includes the mop, a dusting pad, two cleaning pads, spray cleaner, a large spray refill and flooring polish. Our hardwoods are always squeaky clean after using these products!
Then, when your floors are shiny and new, you've put away the final of the cleaning products and accept moved your furniture dorsum in, celebrate with my skinny watermelon margarita. You lot've earned it!
What other questions do you have about hardwood flooring refinishing? Drop them in the comments below, or add together any tips you might have for other Casually Littoral readers looking to refinish their floors.
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How To Clean Up After Refinishing Wood Floors,
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