Geez with the animals doing that I would get sheet vinyl! As far as the wood, it depends on the specs of that specific floor as to whether it can be refinished or not. Do you have any extra boards to look at? Refinishing will lessen the bevel since you are sanding the wood.

I don't have any extra boards. I have a part of the floor behind my stove that they didn't finish all the way to the wall so I can look at a part of the board but it's a pain to pull out the stove so I haven't done it yet. I don't know what type of species it is either. I wish they would have left more than just the warranty. I might try to visit some local stores and see if they can tell me what it is by looking at it.

I've considered ripping it out and putting vinyl in but I've heard mixed reviews about the luxury vinyl plank. We have some high windows that shine directly on the floor and I don't know how it would do with the 100 heat we get here. Wood tile is another option but it doesn't seem as comfortable to me. If there's a way to make the wood we have workable then I would like to try and use it.

Sheet vinyl is THE most waterproof floor that you can get. No worries about heat either.

Without any other information, no one will be able to tell you much about your floor without looking at the boards. If you really want to see what you have to work with then you will need to pull up a board.

I found a piece I could measure and the color. It's Mannington Brandywine Oak in Amber. From what I can tell, it's about 3mm layer of hardwood on top of the base wood. Does that help?

That’s about the minimum for one refinish. As far as how much “ distressing” you would lose, that’s probably a conversation you need to have with a refinisher.

Lots of info here.

https://www.hoskinghardwood.com/department/hardwood-floors/All-About-Wear-Layers--Engineered-Flooring.aspx?dId=7&pageId=53

As to the original question, the floor *can be refinished - 1 time. You WILL lose the distressed appearance. And you will lose MOST of the bevel if not all of it. The concern with bevels and refinishing becomes the complete removal of the FINISH on the rounded edge of each plank. If there is a SPECK of finish left on any of those edges, the refinish could go sideways very very very quickly (split and peel like a sunburn).

Chess is bang on. A chat with a WELL respected refinisher who will have seen versions of your floors MANY times (you may only see one or two of these in your life, but the wood floor guys will see these weekly if not daily).

An honest conversation about the viability of refinishing is a great place to start. If it can be done, great. You get a new, flat, site finished floor. If not, then you know that time is ticking with these floors (14 years is about as long as these floors "look good"...and then the next 4-6 years is all about "saving up" to remove them). A full refinish/replacement of these floor often occurs around about 20 years. But they start looking trashed around about year 15 (bang on schedule in your home). This is common for all wood floors. It is simply part of the life of a wood floor finish.

I wish you luck. I really hope you can get a full sand/refinish out of them. I'm a fan of wood floors and like to see them used to their fullest potential...but it isn't always feasible to refinish engineered hardwood floors that have hand scraped finished.

Thank you everyone for your responses. Yes putting up with aging dogs or just finicky ones is annoying but we love them. It actually doesn't bother me as much as it does my husband who both cleans up their accidents during the day. They were my dogs before we got married so there's that too.

I took all of your advice and called a local floor refinisher. He said my floors were in great shape and should last for many years to come. He said it doesn't look that way to me but he does floors and compared to ones that need to be redone, ours will last many more years. There is a place where it's worn to the raw wood that he's going to fix for us with another coat of polyurethane. He said it was risky to sand and refinish the floors because it's only 3mm of hardwood. He said that if all my floors were in that shape of the bad spot, he would recommend risking it since it would probably have to be replaced if it can't be refinished anyway. Unfortunately, the bevel is just something we have to live with and he said to vacuum it out.

The best part of having the refinisher come out was he told me to stop worrying about dropping water on the floor. He said it would be fine with little bits of water on it and to just dry it up after washing the dishes. He said even the dog pee on the floor can sit there for a while and won't hurt anything. I've never had wood floors before so I was treating them a little more carefully than I probably needed to.

Thank you again for all your advice!

following

I'm just wondering (I know you've made a decision, so it's just food for thought here)...The gaps in a prefinished floor would bother me with liquids...As far as I know, the finish is just on the top so liquids getting in between just would soak in to the unfinished bits, correct? We all know that water just on top is easy to deal with, but I've yet to have a spill that's been decent enough to stay inside the boundaries of one plank of wood :)

Now my thought is that a floor that's refinished would not only get rid of the bevel (a plus for you), but the finish (poly or whatever) would soak into the gaps and help keep everything a bit more sanitary, no?

I don't have a design comment, just a comment about getting rid of aging dogs who pee on the floor. In weighing the value of my loyal best friends and an inanimate hunk of wood, the dogs win every time. FTR, Target's house brand of diapers with a slit cut for the tail work as well as doggie diapers and are way cheaper. (Spoken from experience.)

Pennydesign, that's exactly what I was thinking and why I was so excited to hear that refinishing would solve both my problems (and really the third "problem" of it being ugly). As far as I can tell, the poly does go down a little on the sides of the bevel or at least the stain of the wood appears to so something is there. The dogs have peed in between the planks and my husband has twice dropped a gallon of milk on the floor that went everywhere. We were able to clean it up with no issues but my first thought was getting it out of the bevels because I thought it would swell the wood.

The refinisher said that while it would get rid of the bevels in some places, it really depended on how level the floor was. If it wasn't perfectly level everywhere, it wouldn't sand it all the way down in some places and would in others. Either way it would be better than the bevel we have now but the risk would be it not being thick enough in some places and needed to sand down more (at least that's what I assume was the issue). I have a feeling if it was more than 3mm thick, it wouldn't have been as big of a problem to refinish. Either way, it seems that they spent about $11 a sq ft on the engineered hardwood. He said Mannington was a quality brand and the floor should last for a long time. I was...happy??? about that. Part of me was hoping he'd say this floor is terrible and you should replace it with vinyl or tile or this floor is terrible and you can refinish it to look like a site finished wood floor with a beautiful brown non-orange tone.

I did learn that my floor is not considered distressed like I thought it was. Apparently hand scraped is what the refinisher was calling distressed. I'll post a picture of my floor. It's a picture of my daughter's favorite birthday card but you can see the floor behind it. It's got fake worm holes and gouges in it. I wonder if the terminology is different in different places.

groveraxel,

I would never get rid of my dogs. Dealing with their messes is what I signed up for when I bought them. I also don't want my house smelling like dog pee so I was hoping to come up with something that is functional for flooring given their situation. What I've done is put down a pee pad when it's cold and try to be good about taking them out regularly when I'm home (they have a doggy door). The worst part is the surprise puddles when you are wearing socks. I don't care as much about how the wood floor wears as much as I was concerned about the dog pee soaking into the wood, but the refinisher is going to take care of the one section of raw wood with poly and hopefully that protects it. We'll see long term about the spaces between the boards. So far no long term urine smell...yet. Thanks for the tip about the target doggy diapers. I had to do that with my older dog that has since passed. They add up if you buy the ones from pets mart.

When the refinisher comes to do this, ask if it's possible (in future of course) to do a light sand and poly...just as a top coat...then it would flood the gaps...

I see this floor all of the time as it's very popular here...It does seem to hold up well with dogs...

Pennydesign,

Yes, the floor is pretty popular. Everyone comments on how beautiful my floor is when they see it. What's funny is that when my husband and I bought the house, we both were like...well...we can live with this. I believe my husbands words wore, "This floor is punchy." At least we have similar taste. It just goes to show you that there's different strokes for different folks. The lines do hide the scratches. I will ask the refinisher about doing a coat over the top. That might help and it would hide some of the deeper scratches. Thanks for the suggestion!

misscourtnie23, if you do get pee smell, use an enzymatic cleaner like Nature's Miracle. Best if you can clean it up as soon as possible, though.

Thank you so much Grover, for saying what I was going to only with much more tact. And thank you to Miss Courtnie for treating a living, thinking being with compassion.

I've been there with an aging dog myself and wood floors. And I would no more give my dog away for becoming incontinent than I would have considered giving my mother away when she developed the same condition.

Some of us consider our mothers to be in a vastly different category than pets. Not intending to offend, just a reminder that there are many people that do not feel the same way you do. I had a cat for much of my younger adult life. But if they had ever been to the point of having accidents all over the house, they would have either been restricted to an area where that would be manageable, or I’d have sheet vinyl throughout.

None of you have met my mom...

:-/

Penny, you crack me up.

Chess, no offense taken. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And my opinion is that anyone who gives an animal away because it became incontinent is a lousy excuse for a human being. Your solutions of containing them to a "safe" area or having sheet vinyl are perfectly acceptable choices (again, in my opinion). I was responding to the person who said she should give the dog away....

pennydesign

"None of you have met my mom..."

LOL! Point taken.:-)

If a liquid dog accident goes between the boards of your floor, you can try sprinkling cornstarch on it. The starch soaks it up, and you can brush and vacuum it up when it dries.