Refinish or Replace Travertine with Hardwood Flooring
moneymm
5 years ago
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5 years agoFori
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engineered hardwood floor over old hardwood floor
Comments (14)You need to do a little more archeological digging still. You need to know the whole construction of the floor before you can decide how best to install something new. I'd take up that plywood piece in the kitchen and see what's under it. It's higher than the surrounding floor, so needs to go. You should also be able to see from there what subfloor is under the original kitchen hardwood. It's too bad the space under your entryway is finished, but I'd still do some exploring from below to see what's under there, and to figure out the fix to stop it from squeaking. Is it drywall below or a drop ceiling? I know it probably seems like a pain to tear out drywall, but if you cut out a clean patch, like 2' x the width of the joists, it'll be relatively simple to repair. Just make sure to cut it down the center of the joists so that there's room to screw the patch piece to it later. Cut the hole under the area that squeaks the most, if you can. Have someone walk on and watch the floor from below to see what's moving. It might be as simple as pounding in a couple shims from below, or face-nailing a loose board from above. You want to find out what's underneath the hardwood. It might be laid directly on the floor joists, or there might be 10" wide boards that the hardwood is nailed to. Another thought is to take out a board in the hallway, since that's not original and you want to replace it. See what the subfloor is there. I am a bit puzzled at why, when you've stripped the kitchen down to the original hardwood, it's still higher than the hallway floor. Is your current surface perhaps not the original kitchen hardwood? Peeling back the plywood area will help determine that. BTW, I haven't heard of that stop squeaking product you linked to, so can't offer any personal opinion. And don't pour self-leveling compound over top of hardwood. It needs to go over plywood....See MoreRefinish? Replace? Hardwood Help Needed!
Comments (1)You can refinish the exsisting hardwood. Its going to require sanding quite a bit of wood to remove the grooves. (Assuming you have 3/4"). If you add more wood dont install prefinish(unless you dont want to sand it)...See MoreHardwood refinish and carpet replacement project
Comments (3)Nice thing about red oak it takes stain nicely. Dark colors and grays are then "IN" thing now, and like you stated darker will shrink room appearance, but looks like you have lots a natural lighting. Your floors appear to be natural already with oil finish on them, you may lighten them up by resanding and using water based finish. Scratches are more noticeable on dark floors. If your dogs are under 70lbs I would not be to concerned about scratches, use a good high end finish. check out our page lots of colors to see....See Morecost of replacing hardwood floors rather than refinishing?
Comments (8)We refinished one half of our house (moved everything from one side to the other), waited a couple of months and then did the other side. It is always a pain to deal with floors. We had to have our grand piano professional moved, stored and then returned to us. That was $1000! My advice is to take this opportunity to do a deep purge. Start doing that now in preparation for whatever you decide to do about the floors. Start with your garage. Get it as emptied-out as you possibly can so that there is room in there to hold as much of your furniture as possible. If you have an upstairs and you are not touching the floors up there, purge all those rooms. Purging those will allow you to temporarily store a bunch of things up there. Then start purging all the downstairs rooms. Fill your cars with stuff to take to Good Will, Habitate ReStore, or you favorite local re-sale or charity shop. Also take as many car loads of stuff to the local dump or recycling center as possible. If your kids are grown and need furniture for their new apartments or houses, see if there are any furniture pieces they want to take. Right before the wood floor people are about to start, move everything you can to the garage, upstairs (if you have one), covered patio (cover with tarp). You may even have a neighbor that will let you put some things in their garage. I took some things to my Dad's house for a couple of weeks. After all that, if you need a storage unit, go ahead and get one. They aren't that expensive for just a month. Regarding refinishing vs installing new: if your wood is the thick kind and can be sanded down and refinished, I vote for that. It'll be cheaper than replacing, and there's no reason to throw away a floor if it's not ruined. We even had broken boards and big gaps between some boards. Our wood floor person took out and replaced some of the boards, sanded everything, smeared wood filler all over it, sanded again, and stained. He was great. He even discovered that the stupid previous owners had installed red oak on one side of the house and white oak on the other side of the house! He had to work some magic to make the stains match because those woods take the stain differently. A good wood floor person can do all that for you. I can't remember how many days it took, but it seemed to go pretty quickly once they got started....See Moremoneymm
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