Advice on refinishing a hardwood floor? (with pictures)

[Miss Growing Green]

First of all, I only recently found this forum but am amazed at how many different categories 100% overlap with everything I love!  It's awesome to have such an active group of people that have similar interests and can exchange advice.

Now, we're converting a sunroom in our 1940s bungalow into a bathroom and a mudroom/entryway.  We got the old laminate flooring out of there and discovered some pretty sweet hardwood underneath.  The problem is, it's really old and in pretty rough shape.  I'd like to refinish it and leave it in the mudroom, and I don't mind a "distressed" look.

here's my plan to fix it up, does this sound right?
1) sand with coarse paper, then follow up with fine
2) fill cracks (see picture) with ?? - should I used colored caulk to accommodate expansion/contraction or wood filler that is stainable or just leave the gaps as-is?
3) stain everything to match the treshold (pictured) to match the rest of the floors in the house
4) seal

Any advice about the caulk / wood filler would be much appreciated.  I promise to post before and after photos when I'm done!

[jawisco]

My advice would be to rent a sander (a stand-up drum sander)- and yes, you start coarse and get finer with the sandpaper grits.  The folks at the rental store should be able to give you some advice.  Watch a few you tube videos first, so you know what to do with the sander.  It isn't hard, but you can mess up your floor if you don't keep moving...

Forget about filling in the cracks - there isn't anything out there that will last a long time and nothing synthetic will take stain properly.

I would look for a all-in-one water based poly finish and test it on a small part (or similiar piece of wood) till you get something you like - then do the whole floor.  Watch some your tube videos and read and follow the instructions.  It is tedious to finish a floor, but not difficult.

Don't forget that dust will get everywhere - if you can hang a sheet in the doorway, it will really cut down on dust in the other part of your house.  Have fun!

[Greg]

You may want to add a few steps of sandpaper grades in between, say 80, 120, 180, 220.  Test for lead on those painted areas.  Use a box fan and blow the air out of a window, this will help control dust.  A furnace filter on the fan helps keep the dust from spreading everywhere outside.

If you want to seal the cracks, use epoxy.  To simply fill them to create a smooth surface, use the wood putty.  You'll have to apply the filler after the first sanding, and perhaps touch it up before the final sanding.

Water-based polyurethane is easy to work with and looks great.   And you can tint it.

[kendallf]

I just refinished the 65 year old oak floors in our new house, and they looked very rough initially.  The drum sander can take off that paint, no problem.  With those wide gaps between nearly every board, no matter what you use to fill the gaps, it will show -- I suggest making this a feature rather than a bug.  Fill them so it takes the polyurethane uniformly, but let the filler add to the character of the wood.  :-)

I used wood putty on gaps and nail holes in ours, and then sanded them flush.  You have to look very hard to find them now, in most cases.  If you want to see pictures of ours, take a look at this thread:

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/real-estate-and-landlording/first-limited-renovation/

And house photos (including the floors in-progress) are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26276815@N07/sets/72157632504633648/

[wizlem]

It's hard to tell from your photos but are you sure that is hardwood? It looks more like a pine subfloor to me. It's hard to tell oak from pine just by looking but the floor appears to have never had a finish like you would normally find on hardwood floors.

[Miss Growing Green]

Thanks for the advice all!  Will definitely use multiple grits of sandpaper.

@Wizlem- I believe that what we are calling the "sunroom" was once an open porch with hardwood planks that were never sealed, just painted with that blue-gray paint you can see in the pictures.  I don't think it's a subfloor because it's level with the flooring in the rest of the house.  The rest of our house is the same hardwood, just sealed with polyurethane.

Do you think it would look "neat" to leave some of that paint one the floor to give it a more distressed/antique look, or am I getting to artsy? :)

[jawisco]

I had a floor once that I had trouble getting the prior finish off and I was afraid of taking too much wood off, so I just finished it and it looks decent/good.

If you are open to the idea, try to poly some of the floor "as is" and see what you get and how you like it.  It seems like it would be worth trying and if you like it, you would save a lot of work and some expense. 

I think if you start with the sander, you may as well go all the way and take all the paint off...

[dorkus619]

@wizlem You just got me thinking that perhaps my floors at home upstairs are actually subfloor and maybe not hardwood flooring. I refinished them a couple years ago... hm whatevs, looks okay to me. It's not fancy by any means but the carpet was so nasty that anything was an improvement!

Not sure about what to do with my floors in the future. I've seen lots of pretty LVT recently. Not sure of the general population's opinion, but I like it alright and it would be way cheaper than real wood.

[Simple Abundant Living]

Sometimes old porches were converted into interior space, but they didn't have proper foundation/insulation. In MT, I would first check that out before getting too far in the renovation.

[Miss Growing Green]

@ Mrs. Greenstache- Good point.  And you're right, right before we bought the place 5 years ago the *entire house* didn't have any foundation at all (it was built in 1940).  We had the sellers install a foundation for the whole house and dig out a crawl space (and then get everything inspected) before we bought it, so I think we're good there!

[smbucky]

I did about 500 sq ft of both oak and fir floors and got our sanders and some training from this place called Pete's.  Not terribly useful if you aren't in Minnesota but their website has some great info.  The biggest thing is to make sure you in the right order and don't skip any grits in an attempt to save time.  Also it works great if you use pencil to draw all over the floor to help make sure you don't miss any spots; any missed spots,especially with coarser grits, will show up later as scratches (or swirl marks if using the edger).  On our oak we used Rubio Monocoat as a finish and love it.  For our 100 year old, beat up fir floors we used Waterlox and it looks amazing.  If you want durability, water based finish is the way to go but it isn't as spot repairable as the others I've mentioned.  We purposely used these finishes because they can be applied over themselves for small repairs but the tradeoff is the hardness of the finish.  I also agree on forgetting about filling crack or nailholes but I think that comes down to personal preference. 

Rubio Monocoat might be worth a look for a finish since it comes in many colors and could save you a step and probably look better than trying to stain by hand.  It is also VOC free and food safe so you can use whatever you have left for things like counters, spoons, salad bowls, etc.  I've already typed too much so I'll cut myself off :)

Great FAQ to peruse (especially the last few points):
http://www.peteshardwoodfloors.com/Wood-Floor-Techniques-101/sanding-faq.html#chosentherightgrit

[nawhite]

Pete's hardwood floors is an awesome resource for refinishing your own floors!

Other advice: I'm a big fan of Waterlox instead of polyurethane as it is spot repairable and I think it looks way nicer. You actually can feel the texture of the wood and it doesn't matter as much if you have gaps in the wood. For your situation I think it would be perfect. Getting it to match other floors could be kind of tough but certainly doable.

For sanding, use a drum sander, its way easier. Just be careful to keep moving. Also, old floors like that need a lot of material taken off. You local hardware store will probably tell you you'd be find doing a 60-80-100 grit progression but they are full of crap. 36 is where you'll need to start for floors like that and you may be happier going all the way to 24 grit to start. Taking that much material off also fixes a lot of gap issues between boards.

I posted about doing our floors in July here: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/do-it-yourself-forum!/refinishing-hardwood-floors/msg143163/#msg143163