1800

Category: General | May 17, 2005

$1,800

That's how much it's going to cost to refinish our hardwood floors.

Yeah right.

Time to get another estimate.

I guess I need to explain that I tried doing this myself, but the machine we rented (avoid the Varathane models you can rent from Lowes!) heated the (very old) finish from the floor and then burned it back onto it. I spent an entire evening stripping the floor, which didn't help anything. I ended up taking the machine back and demanded a refund, which I received.

So... I decided to get some estimates on hiring someone else to do it and that's the price I got for the living room, dining room, and kitchen.

Looks like I'll be investing in a belt sander in the near future.

hey - let us know how it goes getting those estimates. we are in the process of patching our hardwood floors right now, and when we're doing, we're going to need the whole downstairs sanded and stained...i have no idea what to expect this will cost, i just know we do NOT plan on doing the refinishing ourselves (d'oh).

leah

If you go the belt-sander route, be prepared to go through a lot of belts, and a lot of frustration. You'll very likely see the same melting of the finish, and it will clog the belts quickly. If it were me, I'd get a few more estimates and hire the job out - finish floors are one thing you wont be able to hide if it turns out bad. And, if a pro does it poorly, you can demand he do it again, for free.

I believe the estimate we got for our 1200 square foot space was like $4200!! We decided we will do it ourselves. We did our maple kitchen floors ourselves using a U-Sander and it came out pretty nice. I will be interested to see what you end up doing also. If you want to hear more about our experience sanding and finishing-just drop me an email.

The rest of our house is oak and we are going to tackle the den first-maybe in the fall.

I never got any estimates for refinishing our oak flooring but I can tell you what the drum sander rental cost me. I used a belt sander and a little palm sander to do the edges and a big drum sander from the local Specialty Rents place. It was about 45 for the day and I used up about another 30 dollars worth of sander pads. I got the whole living room sanded in one day but it was a long one. I couldn't believe the amount of fine sawdust the process created. Even though I wore a ventilator, taped around the door edges, have fans going, the windows open, and stopped to shop vac regularly, I still got a sinus infection and a fine layer of sawdust all throughout the house - still better than paying 1000s to a contractor though.

SD

$1800 doesn't sound too bad to me. I am fixing up a little house in Alaska, and need to have my fir and oak floors refinished. There are no professional or experienced floor refinishers on the island - or within 700 miles of it - so I spent several weeks trying to find someone who would be willing to fly up to do the work. The only guy I could find that was willing to come gave me an estimate of $4500 (for 750 s.f.) + airfare + lodging!!

Fortunately, a carpenter friend took pity on me and is going to do my floors for MUCH less. He hasn't refinished floors before, but I'm sure he'll do a better job than I would.

Good luck with your floors.

Just a suggestions if you don't mind doing the work yourself and can handle the mess. Soy-Gel is great for removing finishes very quickly. I did a test spot on one of the floors that needs to be refinished in my house and it took everything off right down to bare wood in 10 minutes. Since it's chemical you'll want a bucket to scrap the product into when removing it then wipe residue up with a damp cloth. Then you're good to go for a new finish. Good luck with whatever you decide! :)

$1800 doesn't sound bad to me, either~ especially since the existing finish has now been damaged.

1800 isn't a bad quote, no, but they can't let us make payments.

And the existing finish is far from damaged. I've seen worse.