Not so much a DIY question, but a question for those who are DIYers...

[andrea-stache]

We have hardwood floors in our dining and foyer.  The home is 17 years old.  We would like to add hardwood to our living room.  That way the whole front of the house will be in the same hardwood. 

The previous owners of the house had plants in the foyer (big palladium window, lots of light).  They over watered and the hardwood is damaged under where their plants were...really dark, warped boards.  Q1.  Can this type of damage be repaired?

Q2.  If we want to add hardwood to the living room, how would that work out so that there is not a straight line at the threshold where it cut off before (i.e. staggering the boards)? 

Q3.  Generally speaking, how much do you save by sanding/restaining vs. replacing?

Q4.  Any suggestions for stairs?  We were going to do hardwood steps, but after hearing several stories of friends who have done it and have subsequently fallen down their steps, we are thinking of not doing it.  These friends are all in their 40s...we are not talking elderly slip and falls.  The people that did the hardwood steps are investing in runners.  My argument is why spend all the extra money on hardwood stairs if you are just going to cover 70% of the surface back up with a carpet runner.

Sorry for all the questions.  Thanks for any comments!

Edited:

Here are the measurements for those who asked:
Dining Room:  171 sq ft
Foyer:  110 sq ft
Living Room:  210 sq ft

Also including two pictures of the damage in case that helps.

[Le Barbu]

how many sq ft in dinning and foyer?

avoiding straight line is doable but require to get the exact same wood (essence, thickness and width) AND quite some time and skills. But still doable...

depending of the layout, there is a lot of possibilities. how many individual plank to fit? (40, 50, 60?)

in a 17 years old houose, a hardwood floor is still "new". Usualy, you can re-finish (sand etc) about 3-4 times generaly over +/- 100 years!

for the damage issue, re-evaluate after sanding and think about a nice stain color for the entire flooring, this could mask the damages, or not...

depending of the sq ft we are talking about and the layout, there is many options. look for the min and max budgets compared to your skills

[Bob W]

Wow, it hurts me just to read this. lol

Hard wood is generally uber expensive, even for the least expensive, so be ready for sticker shock city.

I wouldn't do the stairs due to the issue you noted,  nose and wear.

Without the sq footage it is hard to comment.

There are two types of modern hard wood -- prefinished and finished after installation.  The prefinished will have a bumpity bump feel when you run your feet across. 

Yes you can match boards and intersplice them.  It will be noticible.

If the living room is substantial and the dining room (really who has or uses those??) is, say around 150 sq ft.   

I would opt for taking out the existing floor and then doing the entire project.

For reference you're probably looking at a minimum of $3 per sq foot for the materials in a prefinished hard wood.    Then add at least $3 for pro installation.   In reality with all you noted I'm guessing if you redid the DR and added the LR, you're looking at around $10 sq ft. 

You might look into some of the newer ceramic wood look tiles.  They look very nice and avoid the all too common water damage issue with hard wood. 

That said,  I love hardwood look.

The other thing is hardwood is very noisy.   We lived in an old house made of slat walls and hardwood floors a few years ago.  With the wood bedroom doors closed you could literally hear someone breathing on the other side of the house.   

If it was me for expediency and cost I would look at some very nice carpet. 

[kendallf]

We have hardwood floors in our dining and foyer.  The home is 17 years old.  We would like to add hardwood to our living room.  That way the whole front of the house will be in the same hardwood. 

The previous owners of the house had plants in the foyer (big palladium window, lots of light).  They over watered and the hardwood is damaged under where their plants were...really dark, warped boards.  Q1.  Can this type of damage be repaired?

Maybe.  If there are no gaps and you sand the floor, it may turn out OK.  If there are gaps, you will be cutting and replacing boards.

Q2.  If we want to add hardwood to the living room, how would that work out so that there is not a straight line at the threshold where it cut off before (i.e. staggering the boards)? 

Is the current floor over a crawl space?  Slab?  Is the hardwood old style tongue and groove (nailed), or a new style floating interlocked floor?  These answers will affect your choices. 

If you can get the same wood species, width, etc. and if you can stagger some cuts (this will depend also on which way the floor is running at the transition), it might be possible.  I might choose to put a thin wood threshold between the rooms as a visual separator and not try to blend them.

Q3.  Generally speaking, how much do you save by sanding/restaining vs. replacing?

I paid just over $1/sqft for sanding, staining and finishing our 65 year old oak floors last year.  That was a friend deal and probably runs on the cheap side.  Renting the drum and rotary sanders might run you ~$100-200 if you want to DIY.

Q4.  Any suggestions for stairs?  We were going to do hardwood steps, but after hearing several stories of friends who have done it and have subsequently fallen down their steps, we are thinking of not doing it.  These friends are all in their 40s...we are not talking elderly slip and falls.  The people that did the hardwood steps are investing in runners.  My argument is why spend all the extra money on hardwood stairs if you are just going to cover 70% of the service back up with a carpet runner.

Sorry for all the questions.  Thanks for any comments!

I love hardwood steps, but if you're concerned with slipping, you might want to pass.  I wonder if anybody's tried finishing the treads with some grit in the finish to add traction?  Google..   :-)

[Le Barbu]

I own a house with hardwood stairs for 15 years now and when I get to old for this, probably just avoid stairs! Dont wear wool socks...

[fiddlercricket]

We repaired and refinished an 80 year old floor.

Assuming this is a traditional hardware floor, it's not too hard to patch.  If you can remove a heat register, or have some other way of seeing what the floor looks from the side, a traditional floor should be pretty thick (about 3/4th inch?) and have tongue and groove.  You can find instructions online.

But your pictures, and the age of the house, makes me think your floors may be laminate.  If they are, they usually can't be resanded, since they are only a thin veneer over another type of wood or wood composite material.  If you can get the same material in the same color (which may be hard), I don't see why you couldn't remove the strips that are bad and replace them.  You can use a similar technique to remove boards by the transition point of the old floor and the new to tie in the new flooring with the old.

For cost, a traditional hardwood floor needs to be sanded and finished after it's installed, so you save no money there.  A new laminate hardwood floor runs $2-8+ a square foot for the flooring itself at Home Depot.

[Spork]

I recently did my stairs in hardwood.  They don't seem particularly slippery.  It is probably going to depend on the finish you choose.  If you go with 10 coats of poly... it will probably be slippery.  We went with an oil based finish... and there is still wood grain to grip your foot.


I think the cost of refinishing is going to be drastically cheaper than replacing.

For interlacing the 2 rooms... you can make yourself a threshold for the door.  (That's what I did, anyway.)  Leave a gap (and possibly cut back the existing side) and make a threshold that covers.

Alternatively, you could just put some boards there that are perpendicular to the existing boards and call that the threshold.

[Jack]

The previous owners of the house had plants in the foyer (big palladium window, lots of light).  They over watered and the hardwood is damaged under where their plants were...really dark, warped boards.  Q1.  Can this type of damage be repaired?

No, but the affected boards can be removed and replaced without tearing out the floor in the whole room. Google "weaving in hardwood floor" or "patching hardwood floor." Never mind, fiddlercricket's post explained it. It's a lot of work, and the result may still not match perfectly. Re-staining the whole floor a darker color might help.

Q2.  If we want to add hardwood to the living room, how would that work out so that there is not a straight line at the threshold where it cut off before (i.e. staggering the boards)? 

Again, see "weaving in."

Alternatively, you can put a larger board across the threshold (and by "larger" I mean the same width as the wall thickness) and then design it so that you've got a one or two foot "border" around the edge of the room parallel to all the walls, maybe with a thin stripe of contrasting-color wood, so that the break in pattern looks intentional.

[TomTX]

I'm actually not a huge fan of  "OMG EVERYTHING MATCHES!!!!"

When we replaced the carpet in our living room with tile, we didn't even try to match the existing hallway/dining room/kitchen tile that abutted. We chose a nice contrasting color and it looks great.

[deborah]

When I replaced boards the new boards were a different colour because they were a different age. That didn't matter with replacement, as boards vary a bit anyway, but it would if an entire room was next to another, and was a different colour and the boards were all going the same direction. When I added an extension, the new boards were at 45 degrees to the ones in the hall. Maybe that would work for your new hardwood floors?

[1967mama]

I've lived in a home with wood stairs and now a home with carpeted stairs. There have been falls on both, but the wood stair falls were much more serious (one child broke his foot) and more frequent. We've only had two minor falls on the carpeted stairs in 5 years. Given a choice in the future, I would definitely opt for carpeted stairs. YMMV.

[thurston howell iv]

After watching Nicole on "rehab addict"- HGTV- and the way she has hardwood floors refinished, I would say sand everything and then if the stains are still visible, re-stain the floor in a darker finish that will "cover" the damaged areas. Nicole does this all the time and if the damage is too bad, they just cut out the bad and patch in some new wood, strip it all and stain it all. Her floors always come out nice.

[andrea-stache]

The flooring is builder grade Bruce hard wood.  Do you guys think it's good enough quality to sand and restain?

[Jack]

The flooring is builder grade Bruce hard wood.  Do you guys think it's good enough quality to sand and restain?

Wood is wood -- there's no such thing as "builder-grade" (solid) hardwood. There are different grades of hardwood which are determined by average board length, uniformity of grain/color, whether knots are allowed, etc., but that's an issue of "rustic-ness," not quality. Durability is a function of species, not price (some durable species are cheap, while some soft species are expensive).

Engineered wood (i.e., plywood) and laminate (i.e., fake pictures of wood) are a different story, of course.

If it's solid hardwood, it hasn't already been sanded down so much that the next sanding would expose the tongues, and it's not unacceptable in some other way (e.g. water damage, warping, excessive gaps between boards) then IMO it's worth refinishing.

[andrea-stache]

@Jack  It hasn't been sanded or refinshed yet.   There is water damage in two spots.  See photo in my OP above.  Given that it's the damage is near the base of the staircase, do you think those boards can be easily removed/replaced?

Thanks so much for your help!

[Le Barbu]

For myself, I would definetly opt for the sand-stain-varnish option. Replacing is a lot of work and need skills. Give a try "weaving" the transition with the living room first and see...

[MsPeacock]

I had a new wood floor interwoven w/ existing wood floors. My kitchen had ugly awful (I hate it) Pergo (laminate wood) and the rest of the house has hardwood. I had some remodeling done including tear up and replacing the kitchen floor. It had to be done because a wall was taken down between the kitchen and dining room. It was very difficult to run the wood between the dining room, through the kitchen, and joining up correctly with the hallway wood floor. My contractor had been doing wood floors for 30+ years and it was labor intensive - a fair amount of the dining room floor had to be pulled up in order to get the weaving correct - and the house is old and not quite square.

However - for those dark spots you are talking about replacing boards - and that is likely much less complicated that weaving in to join a new floor with an existing floor. I have similar dark spots (unforuntately due to a geriatric cat) and my plan is once cat passes and finances allow I will have that section of the floor pulled up and replaced w/ new board. In general, sanding will not be adequate to remove those dark stains (they go much deeper than refinishing can take off). The recomedation for a threshold between the new and old floor is a good one - and a former house I lived in had that and it worked great.

[greaper007]

I had a diaper fall behind the crib in a rental house.   Suffice to say, there was a big black stain on the floor, much worse than your water damaged boards.    Here's what I did (and I didn't lose the security deposit).

I used hydrogen peroxide and I believe baking soda over and over, I even sanded it with steel wool while wet, until the stain was gone.    At that point I had a big spot that essentially didn't have any color, like it had been bleached.    My BIL suggested that I use a little "natural" stain on the mark (this is the lightest color minwax offers).    I dabbed it on and it worked.    Then I lightly applied a little bit of rub on poly.    It wasn't perfect, but no one noticed if it wasn't pointed out.

It looks like your floors have a different color.    See if you can get a sample of the wood species and match the color before you proceed with this method.    Most people will tell you that you have to refinish an entire floor, I think that's unnecessary if you're not a totally anal perfectionist.    Floors get scratched and marked up no matter what you do.    See if you can fix it first.

[index]

You should be able to get new hardwood 3/4" white oak variety for ~$7/sf with installation. Figure $1500 for the living room. You can sand and stain yourself if you want or bank on $3/sf of you want to pay for someone else to do it so about 1k. Look around on craigslist and call handy men till you find someone who can do it.

Doing it yourself, your looking at $750 for hardwood, $250 in retirement rental and nails, $130 for stain and good Polly (check out Zar).