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A Not Quite Fix for My Poor Hardwood Floors

aabbbiee — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:30:55 -0800

How can I limit damage to my virtually-unfinished hardwood floors without the trouble/expense of refinishing? I have an 1800 sq foot ranch-style home built in 1994 (in Missouri, USA). All of the flooring is hardwood, with the exception of a small utility room and the two bathrooms. This is a slab home, and the wood is directly on top of the concrete. I cannot be very specific about the type of wood it is- possibly oak? It's very standard early-90s suburban house wood flooring.

When I bought this house in 2006 (at the top of the market, of course), the floors were not in great shape. I didn't care because I own a dog and do not want to live a lifestyle where I have to place a lot of emphasis on keeping my floors scratch-free. My house is not worth what I paid for it, and I've had to put some very expensive work into it (roof, foundation repairs, new a/c, just to start). This is not a house I wanted to own forever. I will likely sell or rent the place out in 5 years.
In addition, refinishing of any part of the house would require refinishing of all the floors of the house, because the wood flows through all the rooms. I have had a casual estimate of $4000 to refinish the floors of the house. This is not chump change for me, and that new a/c unit was installed just two weeks ago, so I am not exactly rolling in it right now.

Until this past weekend, I didn't worry too much about the floors, but they were not in great shape. I cleaned them regularly by sweeping or vacuuming. Maybe once a year I tried to clean them with Murphy's Oil, whereupon it became obvious that they had almost no finish left. The water soaked in and there was a smell of wet wood.

This past weekend, I had the excitement of coming home to find that a washing machine hose had burst (the washing machine was not even in use at the time) and flooded about a third of the house with an inch of water in just forty-five minutes. (Fantastic entertainment for a Saturday night!)

After the immediate cleanup, I am happy to see that there was very little long-term damage to my house. The floorboards have dried out without buckling. We've had very low humidity this week (totally unusual for Missouri in summer) but the new a/c has been very helpful, and I think I removed the water fast enough that there may not be mold damage. Furniture and other possessions were largely untouched. Rugs are all cotton and can be washed. I was remarkably fortunate.

The only thing that was ruined was [whatever was left of] the finish of the hardwood in that part of the house. In the living room, I can see where the water was and where it stopped. It's not a bad stain and it would likely come out with sanding, but the floors are clearly in even worse shape than they were. Refinishing them would fix them perfectly, I'm sure.

I don't want to refinish. See paragraph #2.
What can I do with these floors? My priority is to decrease the amount of damage that my dog and I could incur if we live on pretty-much-unfinished wood floors. Making them pretty is not really my priority. I just want to limit the damage. (I can't put rugs everywhere.)
Google lists different products on the market that swear they will help me, but I don't know enough to tell the useless & destructive from the magic miracle tonic.
Things that involve sanding seem to be a little beyond my comfort zone as far as things I can do myself (and I don't want to hire someone else).
What options beyond refinishing do I have? How should I be cleaning this floor?

Contractor damaged our hardwood floors - now what?

NailsTheCat — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:25:08 -0800

We're in the middle of having a new kitchen installed. As part of the remodel we knocked down a couple of walls. The house has hardwood floors throughout yet the contractor did not put anything down to protect the floor(!!) when they did the demolition. No surprise then that there are scratches and a couple of gouges on the floor. We're not happy. How to approach this? What rights do we have? When we first raised the issue with him he said they were planning to "buff and varnish" and this would take care of all the scratches and he apologized for the gouges. He also mumbled something about possibly resanding / finishing that level of the house and that he would split the cost.

His floor guy just came round, took one look at the scratches and said that buffing wouldn't fix them -- let alone the gouges. The kitchen floor wasn't fantastic before but it didn't need all these extra scratches. The other damaged room was fine before.

So it seems our only option to recover the floors is to sand and refinish this level of the house. It's 800 sq ft, which at $2 for just two coats, is a cost I could do without. Should we contest that he should foot the entire bill? Or, if we decided to live with the damage, should we be asking for compensation? He's bonded by the way.

We went with the cheapest contractor so perhaps it serves me right -- someone else is doing the cabinet installation. I don't particularly want the guy to take a loss (we're paying around $9,500k) or not make any money but nor do I want to be a chump because of his incompetence. (I mentioned the lack of protection on day 1 and they didn't remedy it for the second day of demo either.)

(Old oak floor. Been refinished at least once before. Denver.)

I thank you all.

Keep us up off the killing floor.

jquinby — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:31:01 -0800

Water damage to our hardwood floors - what can/should we expect? Help!

We had a new dishwasher installed a week ago and discovered last night that it had been leaking from the elbow joint. Our kitchen floor is hardwood, but the planks don't extend all the way under the dishwasher space, so the leak pooled there and then seeped under the boards. It was the discoloration around the seams and some noticeable buckling that tipped us off that something was wrong, but it was so gradual that we really didn't start digging around until last night.

The big-box home improvement store re-dispatched their contractor/installer, who addressed the leak first thing this morning, so at least that's fixed. Their installation service manager is coming out on Monday to inspect the damage.

We've never owned a place with hardwoods, so I'm not really sure what to expect with regards to remediation. I'm doubtful that they'd be able to match the finish/color of the rest of the kitchen, so my opinion is that they're going to have to patch the area and refinish the whole kitchen floor. But then there's the plywood subflooring to consider (we have a crawlspace). The total, visibly affected area is roughly 4-foot by 3-foot. Should I be concerned about mold and such?

I don't *think* they're going to try to shaft us on this, but what should I be looking for regarding the repair? They're clearly on the hook for it - the contractor said as much. I just want to make sure that we don't settle for something half-assed.

So, hivemind: any advice or further considerations?

The rug was put there to protect us, but who protects us from the protector?

mzurer — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:55:17 -0800

Jute rug damaged my floor! My wife and I are moving out of our apartment, and when we rolled up the jute rugs, there seems to be damage to floors underneath as though the actual rug wore into the floor. We had thin anti-slip rubber mesh underneath. If you can imagine the pattern of the rug weave worn into the floor, that's what it looks like. Murphy's oil soap+elbow grease has made it less horrible looking, but still there. Any ideas? Any floor-reconditioning products you can reccomend? The floors are worn and water-stained anyway, but it's not clear if the landlord was going to redo them soon. I'd prefer not to fund refinishing with my security deposit.

A maze of twisty bamboo floorboards, all different

spacewrench — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:14:36 -0800

Have you ever seen a warped, damaged engineered hardwood floor? I'm considering putting an engineered (multi-ply) bamboo floor over radiant heat in the kitchen of my house. There's a wide price range for this flooring, from about $2.79/sf to $10/sf (materials only). The purveyors of expensive material warn that cheap floorboards aren't dried properly and will warp soon after installation -- particularly if I put them over radiant heat. However, I haven't actually encountered any complaints or stories from people whose floors warped, so I'm wondering if this isn't just a story the expensive players tell to sell their stuff. (It looks like most/all of the bamboo flooring comes from factories in China, and I haven't even seen any convincing evidence that it's not all from the same factory.)

So: if you installed an engineered hardwood floor (particularly a bamboo floor) and it warped, please tell me:

Where did you get the flooring?

How did you install it? (Nail, glue, float, etc.)

Was it installed over radiant heat?

How long did it take to warp?

How badly did it warp?

Are there any unusual conditions that might have contributed to the problem?

Thanks!