WoodFlooringGuy.com

I presently have a floating laminate floor installed on top of a engineered floor that is glued to a 3/4″ subfloor. I want to remove the laminate flooring and replace it with a 3/4″ hardwood floor. My question is- do I have to remove the glued down engineered floor or could I install the new hardwood floor on top of the engineered floor? If it is recommended to remove the glued down floor, what recommendations could you make in tips and techniques used to remove it?

While installing prefinished hardwood flooring (bellawood 3 1/4 x 3/4) we ended up with some crooked boards and seams too close together (and a subsequent ladder effect in trying to “straighten” things out). Should we try to remove and reinstall or use wood putty to fill gaps/disguise seams if possible? This misalignment is just on one end of the room and looks like it started about 1/2 way thru the installation.

We recently refinished our floor and when I put the second coat on there were a lot of lap marks all over the room. Is there anyway to fix these? I have not put the cleat coat on yet- just the stain.

My husband and I are planning on refinishing our oak hardwood floors this weekend. Have you heard of saving the dust from sanding and mixing with the varathane for the first finish coat? We were told that this would fill in any gaps or holes in the wood. Is this a good idea or would it create more problems for us?

Is it better to have hardwood floors refinished before you re-paint or after you paint?

I am refinishing an oak parquet floor which I have already sanded. I would like to achieve a dark-espresso finish and I am unsure as to whether I should use oil or water based stain. Which coats should I sand in between? Can I leave windows open for ventilation or do I run the risk of dust causing an issue?

I live in an OLD… 75 yrs. old farmhouse. I am tired of carpet in a 16×27 living room. We ripped it up and found wood floors with finish only around the perimeter of the room. I think previous owners must have varished around a large rug or carpet. The floor in the center looks unfinished, but water beads up on it.

We’re currently building a house and am having 3” wide maple hardwood put in. Our concern is we have a large German Shepard and Jack Russel. We’d like to plan ahead and try to avoid the fate of some other folks asking questions. What is the best coating we should put on our hardwood prior to moving in to protect from the unsightly doggie scratches?

I have relatively new oak stairs that were finished very poorly by the contractor who built the home. 6 years later, the poly is still in good shape mechanically, but I would like to improve the cosmetics. Since this a small but time consuming job, I was going to put in the labor myself when the family is away at the lake this summer. I plan to simply remove the small strips of decorative molding under each tread and re-install new as refinishing these pieces is not worth the hassle. I have a compound mitre saws and pneumatic brad and finish nailer, etc. Hence only the treads will be refinished. would you consider a chemical stripper for this type of work, or do you prefer sanding for all refinishing work? Have you ever used a detail sander around the balusters (‘pickets’) or always a hand-scraper?

I need a sand/stain in my condo for an existing parquet floor. It is the lower level of a loft and is about 300 square feet. I am in need of this work and am having trouble finding a contractor.

We have rental property with stained hard wood floor found under a stained dirty carpet. What would be the most cost efficient solution for us to consider? I thought of staining the floor dark to try to hide the stains and adding a large area rug to room with a one and half foot allowance of wood floor showing. Not sure what to do. We don’t want the expense of wall to wall carpet.

Should cabinets be installed on top of the hardwood flooring? I have heard different opinions and don’t know which is correct.

How do you feel about the durability of water-based finishes containing aluminum oxide? my installer wants to use it, he says he will use 3 coats, or I stick with an oil based poly. The less fumes and recoat time is appealing to me.

I had prefinished oak flooring laid in my new home three months ago. There are several boards with cracks forming in them. One was so bad they had to replace it. Can you tell me why this is happening? Do I have a poor quality floor or was the installation not done properly? They had tested the humidity and said it was okay.

I have a new-found deep appreciation for people who work with wood. Here’s our problem: My husband and I have a very tight budget and scraped together the money to install wide plank pine floors. After sanding with a drum sander (which there seems to be various opinions about whether that should have been used), applying ****** wood conditioner and ****** “Puritan Pine” stain, we have terrible looking floors with visible sanding marks (you can feel the raised areas plus some boards are wavy) both on the open area and the edges are horrible – there are loop marks. What now?

I am purchasing a home that has painted hardwood floors. The home is nearly 100 years old, and I have no idea what type of wood it has or how many layers of awful paint have been added to the natural wood. Is there hope for restoring this floor to its natural wood? If not, what type of paint do you recommend so we can at least change the drab colors?

I installed a floating laminate floor, but my calculations were a little off. I now have a 1 1/2 inch to 1 3/4 inch gap after putting in my last row. Is there trim that can go around that? Currently, the room has a 2 inch baseboard around the house.

I bought an older house and decided to have wood flooring installed in the sunken living room (on concrete slab). Before installing the flooring my contractor said there was a spot that was not level, he charged me $400.00 to level the spot before he would install the wood flooring (not laminate). I paid him to level the spot and he installed all but the last two feet wide and twenty feet long section. Within the first week the floor buckled up over that spot. He came back and removed the flooring over the supposed leveled spot and said I must have a water leak. He now wants $500.00 more to replace the flooring over that spot, nothing about even finishing the job (the 2′x20′ section). From everything I’ve read in researching probable causes for this problem, it seems that he didn’t install properly. The spot was NOT leveled and there are uneven levels of concrete where he “leveled” the spot. When he removed the few planks of buckled flooring, the pieces left are cracking if you step on them, where the concrete is unleveled and there is nothing under to support it. I can find no signs of a water leak. What can I do to make the contractor fix and complete the job right? How do I prove it was installers error and not the supposed water leak?

My husband and I took off the carpet, nails, etc. This past weekend my husband and dad sanded the floors, vacuumed the dust up with a shop vac and then used a damp mop to wipe up remaining dust. The vacuuming and mopping in some parts or the room were done against the grain because at the time we didn’t think it mattered. All of the sanding was done with the grain of the wood. Before we stained the floors , we noticed two areas in the downstairs that appeared to have streaks across them. The streaks/lines were the same size as the mop. We lightly sanded those areas again and then stained. The next day, those areas had very noticeable lines/streaks that didn’t blend in with the rest of the floors. Did the mopping or vacuuming cause this? What can be done to fix this problem?

I would like to know what steps to take to redo a 12 x 10 hard wood floor.