How to know if old hardwood floors can actually be refinished
Fear of ruining the wood and uncertainty over whether deeply worn or scratched floors are even salvageable stops people from attempting DIY refinishing. Instead, homeowners spend time weighing whether to scrap the floor entirely, cover it with luxury vinyl plank, or attempt the sanding process themselves.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1using a large rug to add contrast and texture instead of painting the floors
- 2doing paint samples on the wall while hesitating on the floor
- 3Leave the floor alone and deal with the scratches
- 4Put LVP directly on top of the existing parquet
- 5Scrap the floor entirely
- 6Thinking about using a pin nailer and filling in the holes
- 7Ignoring squeaking under carpet
- 8using an oscillating tool to cut it level
- 9renting an edger to sand it down
- 10replace the paper with mesh
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Sick of sanding. Shit gums up like this every 20 seconds. Feel I'm making no progress.”source ↗
“I'm just not sure if this floor could get there.”source ↗
“I would like to hear thoughts on whether you'd refinish this floor or scrap it entirely, or put LVP directly on top of it, or just deal with scratches and leave as is.”source ↗
“Renting a house where the landlord is going to demo it in the next few years so he's not going to fix anything but also doesn't care what we do to it. I know ZERO about hardwood floors.”source ↗
“We have squeaking floors: What's the easiest way to fix this?”source ↗
“There's a patch of flooring (like 3x3) that was clearly messed up by a chair or something. It's rough and splintering. The extra issue is that it's like... indented.”source ↗
“I just want it to be livable/better without spending a lot of money on it.”source ↗
“I want to refinish these floors, and there’s this weird raised wood lip around the perimeter of all the wood in the room.”source ↗
“neighbors borrowed us their sanders, just intimidated by the work - not how long or hard it will be, but whether i can get it to look nice, i dont want to ruin it.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 6Rain ruined the wood floor in my rental, what happens now?
- 9How to make worn wooden cabinets look better without replacing them
- 3How to protect old wooden floors without ruining them