Are my hardwood floors too thin to sand and refinish?

Hardwood flooring comes in a variety of thicknesses. Usually it ranges from 1/4” to 3/4”. Older century homes in the Greater Vancouver Area often had 5/16” thick floors that were “top nailed”. Over the years, they may have been refinished a few times over, leaving us with 1/4” or even 3/16” thick floors. Can they still be refinished? These floors often can be refinished. The best way to tell is to have a look at a floor transition, where we can see a cross-sectional view of a floor.

A cross-sectional view of an engineered hardwood flooring plank (left), and a solid hardwood flooring plank (right).

Another way to tell if your floors are too thin to be refinished is to look for nail heads between the planks, if this is an edge-nailed floor. Not to be confused with a top-nailed floor. If an edge nailed floor is too thin, you will usually see rectangular nail heads on the seams. The board edges will also be prone to cracking and will be quite flexible.

Example of a wood floor that can not be salvaged.

Note the board edges here are cracked, split, or missing. You can also see black or rusty nail heads BETWEEN the board edges. Not to be confused with top-nailed floors.

These top-nailed floors do show nails, but they are meant to be this way, and are all in line, every 7 inches or so. These floors often CAN be refinished.

If you like the look of your floors, and don’t want to go through the expense of a total refinish, there is an alternative. A “buff and coat” might be an option for you. These types of services are also known as “same-day refinishing” or “one day refinishing”. They consist of thoroughly cleaning your floors, a mild abrading with a floor polisher, followed by one or two coats of fresh finish. This service offers many benefits, but with a few caveats.

If your finish is worn through, the wood may have dark stains that might not come out with a buff and recoat. Scratches generally will not come out or fade away. The new finish will look clean and even, but the color underneath may or may not improve. If the floor is heavily cupped or crowned, the buffing process may wear through the high ridges. This situation can still be worked around by hand abrading the floor. The biggest caveat is that some floor cleaning products may contain silicone or other substances that could interfere with a floor’s adhesion. It’s difficult to guarantee this sort of work but it may be worth a try.

Here’s a good example of a buff and coat that we did in East Vancouver:

Oak floor recoated in one day.

The top part of the photo shows the floor before it was recoated. Alex thoroughly cleaned the floor with a special solution and lightly buffed and polished the floor. The original finish may have been a moisture cured Swedish finish, or an oil based polyurethane. You can see some heavy wearing of the finish, and we weren’t sure if the fresh coat would seal it off. There were heavy dog scratches on the floor.

Thankfully, as can be seen on the bottom photo, the finish had not completely worn through, and it was salvaged. The homeowners were greatly satisfied, and there was minimal disturbance and smell. The dog scratches can still be seen if you look at the floor, but since they still have the dog, they figured it wasn’t worth refinishing it because it would only get scratched up again. This floor was recoated with Loba Duo 2K, satin sheen.

If you’d like to book an appointment to have your hardwood floors looked at to see if they are a good candidate for sanding and refinishing, or for a buff and coat, call Alex at (604)-789-4689.