Refinished Hardwood Floors

Our floor guy finally came and refinished our hardwood flooring! When we pulled up the pea green carpets in this post, we were relieved to find hardwoods that weren't in terrible shape *insert huge sigh of relief*. It's one thing to look at the edges when you're thinking about buying a house, but it's another thing to actually pull them up and see what's underneath. We debated whether we should try an refinish them ourselves, or contract it out. In the end we decided that we would spare ourselves the time and possibility of messing them up, meaning extra money to fix them, and just contracted it out.

Thankfully we had a connection to a guy who came and did them for around $1,600 for approximately 1,000 sq. ft. Why do I tell you the price exactly? Because we wanted to make sure we were getting a good deal on the square footage we had, so I'm sure there's someone out there who's doing the same. In small towns like ours you can usually count on people  giving you a fair price, but when you're newbies you just never know. Pricing might vary depending on location, contractor company or experience, and even time of year. The only areas that were not refinished were the kitchen, which will be vinyled, and the two bathrooms, which are tiled.

Here is a shot of the floors right after we pulled up the carpet. They were pretty, but too yellow and light for our taste, so we asked for a stain that was a shade darker ("Minwax Provincial 211"). There was also spots from the decomposing foam and bad spots in the wood from high traffic.

And here they are after the refinishing....

So good right?! I love how the grain came out more with the stain. The above picture is with only natural light and the pictures below have the hall light. The shade of brown is perfect, not too dark and not too yellow. We left it up to the contractor to decide on the exact stain that would fit our needs and wood type, and he nailed it. From some research, it seems like "Provincial" is very popular when redoing oak floors. We also like this particular stain and top coat combo because it does not leave the floors with a lacquered look, or a really glossy sheen. Now they look more natural and healthy, and more importantly, they look new (major plus when reselling).

The only thing we didn't take into account, was the baseboards. Like newbies we painted the baseboards before they came so when they put the stain on, it got brown stuff all over the carefully taped and painted white baseboards haha. They say you only make big mistakes once and this ones not such a big money killer but mostly a time killer, but I doubt we will make it again.

 For anyone in our area, if you are looking to get your floors refinished, email us at jonesvilleblog@gmail.com and we will send you the details on who exactly we contracted this job out to.