Hardwood Floor Restoration: After Years of Neglect
Hardwood floor restoration can be very challenging. Especially after years of foot traffic, dropped items scratch from bedposts, fires, and floods have left behind all sorts of damage. For us, refinishing the hardwood floors in our home meant dealing with all those things.
Over the last century, these floors have seen everything. I still insisted on salvaging them because they were the only historical pieces left in the entire house and I did not have the heart to tear them out.
Luckily, oak is the type of wood that can stand the test of time. If you can find old oak floors, the likelihood of restoration is high!
Even if you think your hardwood floors are beyond repair, you may be able to breathe life back into them with some of our tips and instructions.
Let’s take a look!
HARDWOOD FLOOR RESTORATION: TRYING TO SEE PAST THE DAMAGE
I honestly hesitated to post the ‘before’ photos of our old wood floor.
They were really that bad.
The floor in the kitchen was beyond restoration (so they said). We found evidence of a flood, a fire, and a DIY attempt that went wrong. Whoever attempted to restore these floors gave up midway. They tossed down a 1/4 inch of leveling compound, and some linoleum, and called it a day.
As soon as we sat this, we knew wood floor restoration would prove to be a challenge.
As for our living room, it was in slightly better shape, but it still had its issues. The boards that we replaced in the living room had cracked with fissures of black charcoal. They didn’t look like charcoal… they were charcoal.
How something burned down that much and didn’t burn the entire house down is beyond me, but here we are.
The house still stands. There were also:
- Scratches
- Gouges
- Raised nails
- Cigarette burns
- Permanent marker
Oh, my. It took a full month to repair all the damage before we could even start sanding.
True story!
HOW TO RESTORE hardWOOD FLOORS
When it was all said and done, we decided to move forward and documented our whole journey when it came to our hardwood floor restoration.
And, guess what? We lucked out!
Our bedroom floor was a combination of two different types of hardwood flooring. It had both 1 1/2 oak boards which matched the living room and 3.5-inch boards that matched the kitchen. Since we had to pull up all the miss-matched boards, it made sense to use them to replace the damaged hardwood in the rest of the house.
That was my husband’s genius idea. He’s a keeper!
Though, he probably regrets that idea.
Piece of advice: If you have damaged boards that need replacing, you may be able to take some from an inconspicuous area like a closet.
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1. DETERMINE WHICH FLOORBOARDS NEED TO BE REPLACED
We started our repairs by marking the damaged floorboards that we could not refinish. After a careful inspection of each board, we realized we would need to replace 30% of the kitchen boards. A piece of cake right?
I found a few tutorials online about replacing a single board but couldn’t see any that did what we were about to do.
Do you know why there are no tutorials? It’s not the best way to do it.
If you install the boards incorrectly, you risk the integrity of the entire floor. Wood floors need to breathe. They need to be able to contract in winter and expand in the summer. Install them too tight and your boards will pull or warp.
We took our time and did each step carefully. It was time-consuming, but it paid off in the end.
2. REMOVE THE BROKEN BOARDS
We started with a drill and a chisel and let me tell you- The work was slow going. We had to be careful not to damage the wood that was remaining but chiseling it all out was going to take far too long. That lasted an hour before we gave up and made the 2-hour drive to the city to get a mini saw.
Update: You can see in the photos below that we ended up getting a mini circular saw. It worked WAY better than a hammer and chisel, but if I had my day over I would have picked up an oscillating saw. We have one now, and there are so many situations where it’s the perfect tool. (I’ve included links to examples of the saws for clarity, but they aren’t the exact models we own)
With the mini saw, we were able to cut out large inside portions of flooring. After we cut out all the boards we could, we used the chisel and hammer to pry out the remaining parts of the boards.
Let me tell you… Hardwood floor restoration is slow work. You have to work around the nails and pull them out without damaging the edge of the remaining boards. Without the edge, the replacement boards have nothing to grab.
Once the old boards were up, and the floors cleaned, the new boards slid into place for us without any issues!
We did have to use glue in some spots. We tried to avoid doing that as much as we could.
Since the hardwood floors need room to expand and contract, I didn’t know for sure what effect the glue would have. But, on sections where we had no lip to secure the board, we had no choice.
After a year of living with these floors, we haven’t had any issues. We haven’t had any boards lift, shift or even warp.
3. CHOOSE YOUR SANDER
When it came time to sand down the floorboards, we used a drum sander. There is a lot of information on the internet about the pros and cons of both the drum sander and the orbital floor sander (not to be confused with your handheld orbital). I can tell you that we’ve used both in this house and I loved the drum sander.
The drum sander did its job and did it quickly. It was also fun to use! I sanded the floors myself with no prior experience and was pretty pleased with the outcome. The first pass had me in awe of the drum sander.
This picture is blurry, but I added it so you could see how much flooring the drum sander removes in a single pass. This photo shows our first pass over the worst parts of the kitchen floor.
Note: If you don’t empty the bag, it will kick up a lot of sawdust.
Don’t fear the drum sander!
The orbital, on the other hand, made me pitch a fit. Never in my life have I been that frustrated. I can’t even look at an orbital floor sander without giving it the stink eye for a full minute.
The orbital floor sander was slow. So slow. Painfully slow. It took me 4 hours to get the same amount of flooring off that the drum sander did in one pass.
Just listen to me – get the drum sander.
Did we leave drum sanding marks on the floors? Yes, we did. Did I care? No.
The restored hardwood floors look rustic, and the few dings that we did make with the sander didn’t matter. They are not at all noticeable unless you get down there to look.
4. How to Sand and Renew Hardwood Floors
We used four different grits when we sanded the floor, starting with 40 for the kitchen.
40 is like using small sharp rocks to remove a good deal of wood and scratch the hell out of everything. We used that grit to level the kitchen floors and remove the leveling compound. It worked like a charm!
Regular floors don’t need to start at 40. If your hardwood boards are as bad as ours were and you need to remove a lot from the top, 40 is the way to start.
It’s important to note that you need to know the thickness of your floors. Our floors were 3/4 inch and had no evidence of prior sanding. We could take a lot off the top before the oak couldn’t handle any more sanding.
We did four different passes with four various grits. Each time the floors revealed more of their beauty. It kept getting better and better.
5. DON’T FORGET TO SAND THE EDGES
After we finished sanding the floorboards, we rented the sanding edger to sand down all of the edges. You need this sander to reach the areas where the drum sander can’t reach. The floor sander leaves about a 4-inch rim around your floors that you will have to sand.
You could try it with a standard orbital, but I can tell you from experience- that’s a bad idea. The drum sander removes a lot of flooring. You would have to be on your hands and knees for a long time trying to match the levels.
The edger does this in a few passes. It’s magical!
It took us 8 hours to sand and edge 400 square feet. We had to do four full passes with the sander and the edger.
6. PREP YOUR NEWLY RESTORED HARDWOOD FLOORS FOR STAINING
Sawdust was EVERYWHERE. Seal your rooms if you are going to do this and save yourself two months of cleaning.
I recommend a quick clean-up after sanding to get the bulk of the sawdust out, give everything a good sweep, and leave it until morning.
If you do the detailed prep work the same day, I can guarantee you’re going to have more sawdust settle overnight. You will end up cleaning everything again a second time.
Cause that’s what happened to us.
We spent two solid hours of clean up. Swept, and vacuumed everything including the walls and ceilings. Wiped down everything with a tack cloth. I thought I would get up in the morning and start applying the stain.
That’s not what happened.
So much dust settled that I had to do it all over again.
You need to ensure all the dust is gone because you don’t want particles in your stain or sealer. It’s a tedious job but one that will make or break your final finish.
7. STAIN THE HARDWOOD FLOORS
This is my favorite part of the hardwood floor restoration: staining!
So, staining the hardwood floors was a simple job. I mentally blocked off 4×10 areas, applied my stain, waited 10 minutes, and removed it with a clean rag.
I repeated this process until I finished the entire floor. It went quickly and it was amazing to watch the oak floorboards change color.
We thankfully didn’t need two coats of stain. One coat gave us the finish I wanted! We used Minwax Dark Walnut and it applied like a dream. It gave us a beautiful mid-warm brown finish.
I loved it!
Dark hardwood floors need constant cleaning to look good because they show every single spec of dust. They were not my first choice.
So why did we go with the dark stain?
It hid every single minor imperfection. Small gaps, tiny burn marks, and even the dings from the sander vanished after applying the stain. It was like magic.
Dark stain + old floors = magic.
We let the stain dry for 24 hours before applying our sealer.
8. ADD THE SEAL TO YOUR ‘NEW’ FLOORS
Sealing the floors was the best part of this hardwood floor restoration. Adding the seal added a layer of shine that brought out the wood in the most magnificent way. You can see in the photo below how the sealer changes the look of the wood. Half the floor was sealed when I stopped to take this picture.
We opted to use a water-based polyurethane. We needed access to the house again and this polyurethane dried the fastest. The polyurethane we used was also low VOC, and it didn’t stink to high heaven. It did smell bad, just not as bad as most polyurethanes. We used Minwax low VOC semi-gloss polyurethane and it worked great.
I used a stain sealer on a broomstick and each pass only took about 30 minutes.
Note: You do need to be careful with the sealing pad. Too much pushing with too much sealer on the pad will create bubbles. I do have bubbles on my floor, but you can’t see them. I can see them because I know they are there and they annoy me!
Save yourself that hassle by going slow and not soaping up the polyurethane.
We were able to get three coats of our water-based poly on in 24 hours. It was dry and hot outside, and the sealer was drying for us pretty quickly.
OUR HARDWOOD FLOOR RESTORATION: THE BEFORE & AFTER
Can you believe they are the same hardwood floors? The after photos all look like different colors, but all the floors are a warm brown like the very last picture. When I took these photos, I was using a potato.
Was it worth it? YES! I love my floors!
It cost us $1.00 (Canadian) a square foot for the sander rentals, sandpaper, stain, and polyurethane.
They are not 100% perfect, but I’m okay with that. These restored hardwood floors have a rustic charm that adds a lot of personality to the house.
If you’re sitting on hardwood floors that are covered up by linoleum or carpet, you should have a peek. You might not have to repair anything. Your floors might only need a refinishing job.
Although our hardwood floors took months to restore, the actual sanding, staining, and sealing happened over one single long weekend.
If you have any questions about our floor restoration, feel free to drop me an email or leave a comment!
More DIY and Woodworking Projects
If you enjoyed this wood floor restoration, check out these other projects:
- $500 Kitchen Restoration
- How to Build a DIY Ceiling Pot Rack
- Rustic DIY Farmhouse Decorative Shutters
- 13 Inexpensive Small Kitchen Storage Ideas
- Industrial Desk Made from Vintage Sewing Machines
- Build an Easy DIY Headboard, Cheap
I appreciate your statement that oak is a durable wood. The wood flooring at my brother’s house need to be restored. I’ll provide him access to this knowledge so he can locate a reliable wood restoration company to collaborate with.
Hello,
I’m doing this same thing at my Moms. Did you fill the nail holes? This floor has been covered with tar paper, plywood, padding and carpet for 51 years.
There are lots of holes after removing the plywood.
What do you recommend?
Thanks a million for sharing your experience.
T in Tn
Hi Theresa, we didn’t have a lot of nail holes, and any that I did have, I stained and you can’t see them really. My suggestion is to use a filler the same color you plan on staining your floors but test an area. They don’t always match after the fact, so I would fill a hole, sand it down, and add the stain over a small area and wait for it to dry. If it matches, you’re golden, if not you will have to try again. If I did have lot of holes in my floors, I probably would have left them alone and had them add to the rustic feel of the floors, but if they are large nail holes, in a visible pattern, filling them is your best bet. If they are small nail holes, maybe just leave them and stain them so they don’t show.
Hi there! Like a previous commenter, this post was like a warm hug for me. We just bought our new home and we were banking on refinishing the original 1900’s hardwoods, but when we pulled up the carpet and saw the state they were in, my husband about had a come-apart.
The primary issue we are dealing with is gapping the wood, since like you, it is crazy humid here in the summer and dry in the winter. It sounds like you preferred the sawdust/putty method for filling gaps. Did you sand, create that mix, fill the cracks and then sand again? Just want to make sure I fully understand our options before I pitch this to my partner in crime!
Hi Alex, I burst out laughing when I read ” my husband about had a come-apart” – because so did mine.
I tried the pre-made putty that’s guaranteed to never crack (it cracked, terribly). What worked for us for the was the sawdust. We filled our gaps with a mixture of clean sawdust (from the 2nd or 3rd pass), added the same stain we were using on the floor and wood glue.
I worked in small batches because the DIY wood filler dries quickly. I mixed about 2 cups of clean wood sawdust from the floor, a few tablespoons of the stain I was using on the floor mixed with enough wood glue to create a putty. You’re looking for a consistency a bit softer than play-dough. I rolled it into long lengths and pressed it into the gaps, and used a putty knife to remove any excess.
You will not use the large floor sander to sand this. It sands VERY easily. I used fine-grit sandpaper, and a hand sander and gently went over all the areas we used the DIY filler.
You do not have to add the stain to the putty, but I found the color-matched much better when I did make the effort to stain the filler. The filler does pick up additional stain when you add it to the entire floor, but I found it didn’t stain quite as darkly as the wood did, adding that extra bit of stain to the filler helped the filler match the floor in the end.
Now here we are 4 years later, and I can say that a few of our DIY filler areas finally started to crack, mostly in our high traffic areas. It is not terrible. it’s not coming out of the gap (like the Commerical filler did very early on), but I can see that the filler has fissures in it in a few spots. We had an exceptionally dry winter last year and very dry summer, and I’m betting that played a role.
The floors still look beautiful, no one notices those fissures except me! Even my husband squints and cant easily find them. But they are there, and I don’t know what that means for those areas long term. If the filler starts to come out, I will refill and restain, and make it work because I love my floors!
Had ours professionally done and wish I had read this before. They said that there wouldn’t be too much dust. Ha. Should have insisted that doors have plastic. The floors beautiful but they are telling me no rugs for 5 months! What do you say?
Hi, Kim! Well, I can say I am definitely not a professional but if they sealed your floors with oil-based polyurethane, then yeah, they are covering themselves. Oil-based polyurethanes hold up exceptionally well, lasts far longer than water-based (what I used), and usually come with a ” don’t put a rug down for X amount of months”. Depending on the level of heat, humidity, air floor, 5 months is a good number to make sure that your floors stay pristine. Although the floors are safe to walk on after a certain amount of days, the poly is still soft, if you add a rug with weight on top it does have the likelihood of leaving an impression even after you think it is perfectly dry and safe. Water-based poly, on the other hand, dried in a day, we were walking on it in 2, added furniture back by the third, and I tossed down my rugs after 30 days. The con for water-based – I had to reseal my floors after a year.
I like that you state that oak is a wood that can last a long time. My brother is looking for a way to restore the wood floors in his home. I will send him this information so he can make sure to find a good wood refinishing service to work with him.
Hi Benjamin! I always feel that if we could restore our floors anyone can restore floors since we had no clue what we were doing when we started out, and our floors were in very rough shape and still turned out beautiful. If he is hiring professionals, they will be able to tell him if those floors are worth restoring or not, but chances are, if they are indeed oak, they can be restored. Thanks for the comment and I wish your brother much luck with wood floors.
Hi Laura, I just pulled up the carpet in my 1940’s home. I have red oak hardwood floors but the floors look like a disaster; old five gallon paint bucket stains, black sticky, tar-like residue, not to mention, carpet adhesive along with thousands of carpet staples!!! I so love wood floors and I really don’t want to cover them with laminate. I’ve been contemplating refinishing them myself, because I don’t have the cash to pay the Pros, I have about 800 sq ft to tackle. Like you, I’m not interested in ” perfect ” outcome, I just want to keep and enjoy the floors. I’m anxious about the dust, how do I go about sealing off other rooms in the house from becoming dust bowls?
Thanks for inspiring me,
Miranda from Oklahoma
Hi Miranda. If it is 3/4-inch oak, refinishing them (especially if you do not care about utter perfection) is entirely possible. We had the same issues – paint stains, a gallon of filler, burned marks, you name it – we had it. The drum sander made quick work of all that junk.
I don’t care what anyone tells you, when you do your floors you will be cleaning dust everywhere for a long while no matter how well you seal your rooms. We did what was recommended. We used giant plastic sheeting and sealed it to the walls and floors with thick painters tape. It did do a good job of sealing the rooms, but some fine dust still made its way around the house.
Seal doors to other rooms with plastic sheeting and tape too, that will give you a double barrier. Our main floor space is very open concept, and we have a vaulted ceiling to the 2nd floor and it was tough to seal that off. I spent an entire day just sealing everything and I still had to dust! But I did find the rooms I sealed with additional plastic sheeting remained relatively dust free.
A few quick tips. Before you start the floors see if you can get an edge view of the wood in the floors somewhere. I said 3/4 inch oak because generally if they are older floors, they tend to be much thicker and if they have been refinished before you will still have lots of wood to work with. If the oak is worn down and thin, refinishing it will weaken it. But if the wood is still fairly thick you will have no worries there. Our floors had been refinished a few times prior, and we had no issue, but it is good to know what you’re starting with.
We also did our floors in sections, first, we did the kitchen and dining room, sanded, stained, finished. Then a few months later we did our living room. It was about 1000 square feet in total and each of those projects took the two of us an entire weekend. So give yourself plenty of time.
Go over the floor with a fine tooth comb before you start standing, one small missed carpet staple can rip your sanding sheets. Good luck! (it’s a lot of hard work, but so worth it in the end).
Hi! I just happened upon your blog while looking around the internet for inspiration (and instruction) on restoring old wood floors. I just bought my first home…a total fixer upper…and the first major project I’m tackling is restoring the floors from the layers of carpet, subflooring, and linoleum above the original pine boards. This post has given me so much hope! Thank you for sharing your journey.
Restoring the floors in this house made all the difference in the world to the feel and look of the house. I wish you all the luck possible for your floors. If, like me, you find yourself laying down in the middle of a pile of sawdust, pitching a fit that would impress a two-year-old just tell yourself it will be worth in the end. It really is! (that actually happened, not one of my proudest moments).
Cheers,
Laura
How did you fill in any big dents/gaps? I have heard you can use the sawdust you accumulate from sanding, mixed with wood putty, to fill the gaps and color match exactly. I have 8 rooms to refinish, so I want to make sure I do it right.
Hi Mary. I should update the post. We used both the sawdust stained with wood putty and a wood filler product that was guaranteed to never crack. The wood putty that had the no crack guarantee, cracked and chipped like mad. Our area has very wild swings between humidity and dry dry weather, and I will say that it played a role in the cracking. But it did chip out in big sections.
The sawdust method was messy but it held up the best for us, it never cracked at all and I felt looked more natural likely because it took the stain a bit better than the woody putty on its own.
Hope that helped, cheers!
Hi! I love your blog and these restoration posts! What stain and finish did you use for your floors? Also, what baseboard did you use?
For background, I recently bought a home that had horrendous carpet, peel on vinyl, 1970s vinyl, laminate flooring… pretty much everything and anything in the book. Low and behold, beneath all of this flooring and sub-flooring are original hardwoods, which are in terrible condition, but according to my contractor, salvageable! I love the color and look of you floors and would love to recreate it!
Hi Colleen, we used Minwax Special Walnut. Our main floor had both white oak and red oak, so the stain looks a bit different in different rooms. No one seems to notice except me, but I was up close and personal with them. We also used Minwax Low Voc Waterbased satin poly. I would 100% skip the waterbased finish next time and go with oil stain and your contractor will probably recommend you go that way. It lasts longer, provides a better finish that just feels more protective. We didn’t have the time to wait for the oil-based finish to dry, so we opted to water-based.
Our baseboards are a huge cheat. We needed to replace all the baseboards in the house and I wanted something a bit more substantial vs rinky dinky 3 inch MDF trim boards…but wood trim was not in the budget.
We bought 3/4 inch MDF boards and had them cut to size. We went with the original 1900’s sizes, so our trim boards are a full 6 inches high (not 5.5) and our trim around our doors and windows are a full 4 inches thick (6 inches on the top). Having the MDF sheets cut saved us 70% and we were able to get custom sizes cut.
The raw MDF boards require about 3-4 coats of paint, but once it is painted you would never know it was MDF, it straight up looks like wood.
I’d LOVE to see the restored floors when you’re done! If you have any other questions feel free to drop me a line anytime. Thanks for the comment and good luck with your restoration.
I love this tutorial! It brings back memories of my own floor finishing projects, including the ones removing 200 years of layered pumpkin colored paint off the floors of our 1803 cape cod. Lead paint, no less. 6 Rooms worth. That was a bear of a project. I also remember the guys at the drum sander rental place laughing at me when I went in to pick it up. They were convinced I couldn’t handle it, but I sure proved them wrong, lol! It really was not that hard at all. The edger was harder, having to be bent over to work. The results are worth it, though, as you have discovered. Thank you for the blog and the memories.
Ooof, 6 rooms, does sound like a big job! My husband did all the edging thankfully. I was done with the drum sander long before he finished with the edger. I had it easy. I don’t know if I got more satisfaction from the results of those floors or for doing despite the naysayers and doubters!
Thanks so much for your comment, it absolutely made my night.