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What to do with a crappy hardwood floor
JustinSane07
Really, stupid?Brockton__BANNED USERS regular
Really, stupid?Brockton__BANNED USERS regular
Okay folks, it's backstory time!
So my friend Chris bought this house, with the intentions of me moving in with him. Upon seeing the room meant for me, it was clear it needed work. We painted and took care of damages to the walls. But it leaves the matter of the floor.
Now the floor is hardwood, as evident by the thread title. Before we started painting, the floor was sloped, dirty, dented, dull, gouged and cracked in some places. After we painted, it was all that and had paint on it from various painting mishaps. We've been kicking around a few ideas on what to do...
- Leave it alone. It's shitty and there's nothing that can be done about it.
- Clean the paint up off it. I looked up how to do this and it seems that rubbing alcohol is the easiest way to get the paint...and the finish up. But the finish is ruined on most of the floor anyways.
- Refinish it. This could take skill I don't have, and despite looking up DIY guides online, I don't feel comfortable doing it myself.
- Refinish it profesionally. This will cost money, but I'm not sure how much. Any ideas on an estimate? The room is 13'9" x 10'8" for a majority of it with a small addon space.
My concern with refinishing the floor, both professionally and DIY style is that boards might have to be replaced, which would drive the cost up.
- Lay a carpet down. Another thing I looked up to DIY, and I feel I can't do. My friend thinks it's easy, but after reading stuff about taking the molding off, I'm not quite sure I want to jump into this. But it would cover the damaged floor.
- Lay a carpet down professionally. Again, money. But it could be cheaper than refinishing the floor professionally. I think? I don't actually know.
So, any advice on what to do?
So my friend Chris bought this house, with the intentions of me moving in with him. Upon seeing the room meant for me, it was clear it needed work. We painted and took care of damages to the walls. But it leaves the matter of the floor.
Now the floor is hardwood, as evident by the thread title. Before we started painting, the floor was sloped, dirty, dented, dull, gouged and cracked in some places. After we painted, it was all that and had paint on it from various painting mishaps. We've been kicking around a few ideas on what to do...
- Leave it alone. It's shitty and there's nothing that can be done about it.
- Clean the paint up off it. I looked up how to do this and it seems that rubbing alcohol is the easiest way to get the paint...and the finish up. But the finish is ruined on most of the floor anyways.
- Refinish it. This could take skill I don't have, and despite looking up DIY guides online, I don't feel comfortable doing it myself.
- Refinish it profesionally. This will cost money, but I'm not sure how much. Any ideas on an estimate? The room is 13'9" x 10'8" for a majority of it with a small addon space.
My concern with refinishing the floor, both professionally and DIY style is that boards might have to be replaced, which would drive the cost up.
- Lay a carpet down. Another thing I looked up to DIY, and I feel I can't do. My friend thinks it's easy, but after reading stuff about taking the molding off, I'm not quite sure I want to jump into this. But it would cover the damaged floor.
- Lay a carpet down professionally. Again, money. But it could be cheaper than refinishing the floor professionally. I think? I don't actually know.
So, any advice on what to do?
JustinSane07 on
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Some ideas on the cheap:
Sometimes the "distressed" look can be pretty attractive. Maybe try to clean up the worst of the damage and keep it that way? The adjectives "sloped" and "cracked" worry me though.
Also, area rugs can be a cheap way to minimize the open floor seen by people. Your furniture should also cover a good deal. My fiancé's apartment also had very old hardwood floors and she just got some sheepskin rugs to throw around over the crappyest of spots.
I'm not wild on the idea of wall-to-wall carpet though. I don't have any estimates but the chance to get some beautiful refurbished hardwood always seems a better option than putting down some berber.
People will hate you for it, but at least it won't look like Pollock's studio any more.
I wouldn't recomend doing any repairs yourself - is there anyone you know who's at least a general contractor type?
I would probably either spend the money to have someone do it, or just carpet over it. Carpet is much ceaper than redoing a floor, yes.
Hell if we know. There's a damn puzzle on the wall in the main stairway that we don't want to take off for fear of what's behind it.
As far the "sloped" adjective goes, let me see if I can describe this.
If you're standing in the doorway, if you were to walk straight ahead about 13' you'd walk face first into the wall that's against the outside of the house. You'd also be walking at an incline. From the outside wall, I'm going to call it, there's a noticeable slope in the floor for about 10", and then the rest of the floor is a very gradual slope to the wall where the door is. We put a golf ball down to test this, and sure enough, it kept rolling to the corner where the door is. No matter where we put it in the room. The whole floor funnels, of sorts, to the door.
Here's the problem I have with putting carpet down. First, there's very little ground clearence from the door to the floor presently. I'd probably have to make the door shorter by shaving some of the bottom off of it to get this to work. But to be fair, that's a pretty easy fix. I already had to do this to get the door to close silently.
The more major problem I have is this, when you come up the stairs, you stand on what's more of a stoop. Left is my other friend's room, right is "my" room, and straight in your face is a wall. There's no hallway to speak of. To get into either room, you have to step up again. Now this stair way is not carpeted either. So I fear that carpeting my room, to the doorway, might not only look kinda stupid (there's no other carpet in the house at all, it's all floors) but I'm concerned with the safety of this.
Floor refinishers will also give you free quotes; you can often do it over the phone if you only have one room; get the measurements and they'll usually do it by sq ft.
I had about 1000 sq ft redone, including stairs, and it cost, I think, about $2100 for the whole deal.
As to fixing the tilt, that could be considerably more work and money. A lot of people use lightweight concrete, like gypcrete to pour in over the sub-floor, which since it's a colloidal liquid will naturally level. There's so many concrete finishes out there now that you wouldn't even need to refloor, probably just polish the concrete for the best look.
Edit: I should not the though that this adds weight to the floor and can cause continued deflection problems which then create cracking in your new concrete, so it's best to figure why the floor is moving to begin with, which is usually a soils issue.
If you wanna go cheap, clean off the paint, and throw down some nice rugs.
I would have serious worries about the foundation if the floor is sloped 10". Did Chris get the house inspected?
He did have it inspected and there is some termite damage to the basement, but nothing to the second floor.
There's a Home Depot roughly 2 miles from the house, I'll have to check with them about putting a rug down.
I can't even think of what would cause that unless it was simply built off-kilter.
In either case, you're not fixing the slope without redoing the foundation or the load-bearing interior parts of the house which will cost you a big chunk of cash.
I'm in the DIY sand it and finish it crowd. If you ask the guys at home depot they'll be able to tell you what kind of varnish would be best. If you can find or figure out what type of wood it is that will help them.
Just for the love of god remember to do a thorough vacuuming of the room before you start putting varnish down.
1. Buy some paint stripper, rubber gloves, a cheap paint brush, a paint scraper, some 00 and 0000 wire wool, some cling film, old newspapers and some white vinegar.
2. Open all the windows in your room, put the rubber gloves on, wear old clothes and paint the paint stripper on top of the paint you spilled.
3. Cover it in cling film (sarin wrap??) and leave for 1 hour.
4. Using the paint scraper, scrape off the cling film with the paint stripper and gooey old paint, and dump it into the middle of your old newspaper, throw it away.
5. Go over the residue of gooey paint with 00 wire wool and a little more paint stripper, carefully, rubbing along the boards, in the direction of the grain.
6. Repeat, with 0000 wire wool.
7. Repeat with clear vinegar to neutralise the alkaline paint stripper residue.
8. Leave to dry, then take your gloves off.
Then, either:-
a) scrub the floor with a mild detergent and some water, mopping up the muddy water as you go. Leave to dry, rub down a little in the direction of the grain, then varnish/lacquer the floor. Or wax it - could be slippy, though.
or
b) hire a sander, sand the floor properly and then varnish/lacquer after you've swept up all the dust.
If you hire a sander, wood dust will get everywhere, including up your nose and in your eyes. Buy goggles and a face mask. If you just scrub the floor, it won't be perfect, but with a couple of rugs, it will be fine.
Laying a carpet in a bedroom isn't that hard, either, just be sure you get a Stanley knife with a carpet cutting blade. You don't have to remove the skirting boards (mouldings). To stop the door catching on the carpet, lay a sheet or 2 of sandpaper on top of the carpet, and open and close the door over it til it stops catching - easier than trimming the door, cos you only do it til it doesn't catch = no gaps at the bottom of the door.
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
Mine is just the theater company way.
It could be multiple things, if this 2nd story was built by amateurs they could have undersized the framing, not evaluated the extra load on the foundation, causing deflection, used wet wood, or just built it bad. Being he didn't buy the house, it's not really his concern so much as the owner's, the real key to fixing that problem is determining what caused the deflection, there are cheap ways to fix it if you can make sure no more deflection will occur.
Haha, we also just paint over things.
I love hardwood floors, an idea of how bad it really is would be good to see if it's worth it.
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
Yeah, I can get some pictures taken next time I'm over there, which will be Friday night.
This is my hall floor, with part of the side of the staircase. I used a hot air gun to strip the staircase - it had over 100 years of paint on it! I then sanded it and waxed it. I sanded the floor with a hired sander, then stained it and varnished it.
[URL="[URL=http://img218.imageshack.us/my.php?image=woodhallfloornm1.jpg][IMG]http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/8936/woodhallfloornm1.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]
This is the kitchen floor - sanded with a hired sander, stained then varnished.
[URL="[URL=http://img216.imageshack.us/my.php?image=woodkitchenfloorrm6.jpg][IMG]http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/1079/woodkitchenfloorrm6.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]
Here's a bit more floor
[URL="[URL=http://img218.imageshack.us/my.php?image=woodmorehallfloorke9.jpg][IMG]http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/7509/woodmorehallfloorke9.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]
This is a close-up of the staircase - it took me 2 days to do.
[URL="[URL=http://img216.imageshack.us/my.php?image=woodstaircasenv4.jpg][IMG]http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/2303/woodstaircasenv4.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]
Taking the photos made me realise the floors need more varnish.D:
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
wait....
And MichaelLC, thank you, I think!
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
Is there a subfloor underneath the hardwood? If there is, you can also consider ripping out the flooring and putting in a floating floor of some type.
To get an idea of prices, just go to Home Depot or Menards or some other home improvement place and look at what they have in the flooring section. Figure out the price per sq. ft. and multiply that by the square footage of the room + 10%.
And after some research in carpeting, it appears that the big chains (NationalFloorsDirect, Empire Today, HomeDepot, etc) are bad bad ideas. They all use independent contractors and use that as a way to weasel out of responsibility for bad jobs.
So now I'm looking for good, local smaller stores.
I don't have a whole lot of experience on that side of things but my dad is a carpety layer and I've worked with him for a while and that seemed to usually be his recommendation when people would ask.
All that being said if your floor is messed up at weird angles and stuff and rotting or whatever, simply covering it with carpet isn't really a great solution. You'll just have a funky floor, covered with carpet, and any big bumps/dips and whatever you're just going to feel threw it.
The other thing to consider, although I guess it doesn't matter as much to you is that if you do go through a carpet company they'll charge say 9 dollars a yard and pay the installers 4.
Anyways check around for the best deal, a good thing to do is ask the same questions to multiple stores and then you can get a feel to who is bullshitting you.