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First things first


Posted by Henry in MI on April 10th, 2004 08:10 AM
In reply to Restoring old wood floors by Michael Kilfoy on April 10th, 2004 12:47 AM [Go to top of thread]

Michael, the first thing that you need to do is to find out how much thickness you do have to work with. Floors with tongue and groove joints will only stand refinishing, and the loss of wood by sanding, so many times, until it is impossible to refinish them. A floor typically will start out at 3/4" thickness and the initail sanding will remove a little wood. Every 20-50 years after that, a floor has to be refinished as normal wear and tear will remove wood from people and animals walking on them. Boots with nails in them were a lot more common years ago and could tear up a floor pretty well. The refinishing would typically remove about 1/8" of wood and 2 refinishings is about all you get if you are lucky. You could just strip if the floor is otherwise intact and you are not worried about it being level but you can not remove stain without a very involved and dangerous process that I do not suggest.

So the next question is "How much wood is left?" and the answer will be found by checking the thickness at the edges, under the base molding, or in a closet or some place where the floor is normally hidden. Find a place that you can get to an edge and check it with a depth gauge or just use a piece of thin wood and your thumb nail as a depth gauge. You know that you started with 3/4". How much is left? Don't try to push this by cheating on the measuring, like if the floor just under the base cove hasn't been sanded but you can see that the rest of the floor has.

Henry in MI

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