FloorTalk – for all the latest flooring fashions

By Steve Cooper

Though there are many home improvement projects that the average homeowner can tackle, refinishing your wood floors should be removed from the list in most cases. Putting life back into hardwood flooring can challenge the skill and experience of most DIYers.
Not convinced? Here top five reasons you shouldn’t attempt refinishing floors yourself:

1. Clueless about wood flooring. If your floors are less than 20 years old, chances are good that they are engineered wood. This means that they were made like plywood, with a series of substraits topped by a beauty layer that may be too thin to sand.

2. Struggling for time. It takes time to prepare and refinish a floor. It’s tempting to think that the drying of finishes will take up most of the time. However, there’s also moving furniture, cleaning floors, repairing flooring flaws, restaining, and putting down mutliple layers of clear topcoats.

3. Dangerous with a sander. You’ll probably feel in control right up to the moment that the sander digs in and gouges your flooring. Even if you use an well-worn sander belt to rein in the machine’s strength, it takes just a split second to ruin a job.

4. Mystified about stains. In a perfect world, getting the stain color you want requires making samples on small pieces of flooring material. But your house didn’t come with flooring samples, so all you can do is try out stain colors on a closet floor. Does this seem professional? Will the results be?
5. Confused by oil-based vs. water-based finishes. One smells more than the other—so what more do you need to know? But there may be a problem with the consistency of the finish. What do you use to dilute it if it seems too thick? Oh, yes, and what’s too thick?

There are more reasons, too. They add up to one obvious conclusion: Hire a professional to refinish those floors. This is a job that is definitely tougher than it seems.

To find a professional who specializes in cleaning and restoration, click here.

For more information on flooring visit the World Floor Covering Association’s Consumer Carpet & Flooring Guide.

Submitted By Steve Cooper

Squeaks, cold, moisture—the flooring challenges in your home may seem insurmountable. But any experienced flooring expert knows to prescribe just the right underlayment. Problem solved.

If your house has any of the following conditions, talk to your flooring installer about a cure:

• Your kids’ bathroom floor is always awash in water and you suspect it may be affecting the floor.

• Too much noise on floors upstairs can be heard downstairs.

• The house was built on a concrete slab and you have reason to expect cracks will soon appear in the concrete. In turn, cracks would impact your wood, laminate, stone or tile floor.

• Wearing socks and slippers throughout winter is the only defense against frostbite from cold floors.

• The subfloor in your home is more like a roller coaster of hills and valleys.

• You plan to install a laminate floor as a DIY project and want it to perform as if a pro put it down.

All these conditions and more can be corrected with the proper underlayment. Tell a flooring professional all about your concerns. Only by full disclosure can you get the right type of material to solve the problem.

You’ll be introduced to several product choices. There is usually a good, better and best solution to consider. A good solution should do a reasonable job at a low price. A better solution will almost always be a total cure. And the best solutions offer a combination of characteristics that promise impressive results. For instance, you may just want to have warmer feet, but the best underlayments may add moisture control and great sound deadening in addition to superior insulation against heat loss. 

For more information on flooring visit the World Floor Covering Association’s Consumer Carpet & Flooring Guide.