Many houses are now being equipped with hardwood flooring due to its attractiveness and natural look. If you have existing hardwood flooring that you installed many years ago, it could already look weathered and badly scratched. It’s a bad idea to simply hide the hideous scar with your carpet. You need to refinish the hardwood surface to regain the lost appeal and increase the value of your house. Refinishing hardwood flooring is relatively easy compared to other home improvement projects. However, you should be aware of professional refinishers who may charge you with exorbitant fees. Make sure that you won’t succumb to their demands and always maintain a total control on the direction and most details of the projects. You may not have the know-how of doing hardwood refinishing, but you can still use your common sense.

There are some basic details that you should know about hardwood refinishing project. First of all, make sure that all the preparatory stuff is done properly. The worker should prepare all the necessary tools and equipments. Determine the color scheme that you want to choose. You may want to use the original color scheme, or you want to make the flooring look brighter or darker than before. Sanding is a crucial step in hardwood refinishing project. It is intended remove all coating, which can still be in good condition in some spots, but already completely worn out in some areas, due to daily wear and tear. Sanding will also improve small indentation and dents, due to impacts with hard objects. Before sanding, make sure that all nails are taken out to avoid damaging the sanding discs or sand paper. Put wood fillers into the small nail holes and make sure they have the same color with the wood.

If the hardwood flooring area isn’t big, you may manually sand the floor by hand and you don’t have to use the electric sanding tool. If you need the tool, you should rent, instead of buying it. If your budget is more flexible, you can get a decent sanding tool for just about $100. If you think that you will need to use the electric sanding tool in the future, then it should be a good investment. You should sand the hardwood flooring at least three times. Start with sanding disc or paper with heavier grit, depending on the condition of the flooring. Choose lower grit level for the next phase of sanding.

After the surface of the floor is perfectly smooth, you should start staining it. Choose the most appropriate color. Test it on a small plank to make sure that you are satisfied with the result. Make sure that you apply the stain equally. After all planks are stained evenly and completely dry, you can refinish them with polyurethane finish. Stir the finish evenly and apply it equally on the flooring area. It may take about 6 hours for the solution to become completely dry. Although it’s no longer wet in 3 hours, you should avoid stepping on it, because the finishing layer could still be somewhat soft.