Refinishing the floors

I have been busy with the latest project at the Burien House. The project this time was refinishing the hardwood floors. The house, built in the 1950s, has hardwood floors throughout. Floors that have been neglected during its 60 years of existence. It was in desperate need of refinishing. I refinished the floors myself.

Here are some before photos. Notice the heavy, dark wear patterns and the plethora of scratches.

I rented a couple of floor sanders and my buddy Kemp and I tackled the dusty job of sanding. As we sanded, I could not get out of my mind the image of a giant palm sander, my body somehow shrunk, till I could ride atop it like a noisy, snarling, shake-your-joints-loose monster. Hours later, the floors cleaned up quite nicely. Here are a few post-sanding photos.

Then came time to put the new finish on the floor. I would one-thousand times rather sand than do the finishing. It is a slow, time consuming, exacting process. On the recommendation of a few friends in the professional floor finishing world, I went with Daly’s Floorfin. It is a very easy product to work with. The instructions call for three coats. The wood soaked up the first coat like crazy. It used an entire gallon. The next two coats only used half a gallon each.

Pictures from the first coat:

Here is Bella showing off the finished floor! It came out quite well. Doing it myself saved a pretty penny too. All told I spent less than $400. A professional contractor would have been thousands.

If you need to refinish your floors I am a proponent of doing it yourself. It is not as difficult as it sounds, and Daly’s Floorfin is an easy product to work with.