Refurbishing Pine floors question?

Re: Refurbishing Pine floors question?

mark nowicki

Not your house, not your money, not your family.

Suggest you stay out of this.

Re: Refurbishing Pine floors question?

Barry Irby

Good thought. Hard for me to do. But, you are right. However, I have been involved from the beginning. I actually bought the house and signed it over to them and then replaced all the interior doors. The father questioned me about the floors. I have tried to stay back out of the way, but they are blundering their way through. (An example would be that they hired another somebody from the church to take down the wallpaper in the bathroom. Turns out they did not know how so them took down the drywall.)

So now I am trying to give the benefit of my experience (and WC's) from 5000 feet instead of 30,000'.

Re: Refurbishing Pine floors question?

Don Stephan

30,000 feet may be too close. Sounds like a lose-lose situation. For some people it is preferable to have something to complain about after the fact than to take responsibility for research and oversight to get good results.

Re: Refurbishing Pine floors question?

John in NM

Definitely it is stained.

Age darkened pine is scarcely darker than a dark amber color, and even then I wouldn't know that it hadn't been stained. We had a house in Maine when I was a kid that was basically all pine interior. Some of it was about the color of unstained oak, some was a little darker like not-fresh but not old cherry.

We have lots of it at the community center here where I'm working, I can send you a picture if it would help for demonstration.

Even if the floor is age darkened rather than stained, it's going to look streaky if not taken down to fresh wood throughout, and you're right, the joints between the boards will be dark. Given that it's pine, it might be quite a project to get below the stain anyway - sand off an 1/8" in spots. On the other hand, if it had been finished clear, then refinished with the stain, the color might come off pretty easy as the old finish would act as a sanding sealer.

Re: Refurbishing Pine floors question?

Mark

I have done this twice at our cottage which has about 600 sq ft of 1x6 T&G pine floors installed in the 1960s.

The first time after we acquired place required very heavy sanding over the entire floor as some spots were badly worn, dirt stained, scratched, etc.

If they are badly worn a light sanding isnt going to leave them uniform as you suggest and re-coating over a poorly repaired floor just results in a shiny damaged floor.

Perhaps to avoid being put in the middle, a suggestion would be for your Daughter and SIL to get some advice and suggestions from a professional flooring person where they would likely see your advice holds up and the other ideas do not.

I'd sand them back, stain evenly, and finish with Urethane

They'll look great.