Restoring and replacing floors
Does anyone know of a wood floor expert who can advise us how we can work with what we have? We are in the middle of a major renovation of a 4 family brownstone and currently working on the parlor floor. After removing layers of linoleum we uncovered beautiful parquet floors with 6 inch “slats 
Does anyone know of a wood floor expert who can advise us how we can work with what we have? We are in the middle of a major renovation of a 4 family brownstone and currently working on the parlor floor. After removing layers of linoleum we uncovered beautiful parquet floors with 6 inch “slats†with mahogany/cheer inlay border. Unfortunately the floors are missing in about 10’x6′ feet worth of space. We are not looking for perfection just options for a solution on repairing and/or replacing old brownstone parquet floors.
BHS…mine is apparently not polyurethane because the guy who stripped my fireplace stripped a small spot of the floor by mistake. That’s what got me thinking in this. The biggest hassle at this point is that I’m moved in and some of the furniture is quite large.
jenludovice…is Mr. Sandless just as the name would suggest, a non sanding process?
DIBS if the finish on the floors is polyurethane my understanding is that the only way to get that off is by sanding. Hopefully what SenSt said is true and sanding is fine. If it’s not poly, which might be the case if the last refinishing was pre 1970s, then refinishing is a potential DIY non-sanding job. It could be shellac, shellac with wax on top, or even just a waxed stained wood. The job of removing wax, shellac, varnish, etc. does unfortunately sound like a lot of hands-and-knees work, room by room (either expensive or time consuming depending on if you’re doing it yourself). I found some detailed how-to discussion in some Old House Journal editions from the 1970s that handily came with a house I bought. Polyurethane was apparently still being debated back then for use on old floors vs. traditional finishes/treatments. At least in some circles!
I have recently finished a project during which we carefully removed and re-installed parquet. We have a fair quantity of extra material, but don’t kinow if vintage is correct, maybe 1900.
Bruce
bruceatjerseydata.net
SenSt – Yes, that’s true but I also had a hard time just finding quarter sawn so the grain would match w/ my existing parquet when I was trying to replace a scorched mark in a floor that had been covered w/ carpet when I bought the house.
Arkady – you can still easilg get quarter-sawn. The problem is that the old timbers were from ‘old growth forests’ — the trees were MUCH wider in diameter.
New wood is farmed and cut at a much younger age.
Once quartered, the growth rings are much closer together on more of the resulting lumber (ie more floor boards come from closer to the center of the tree than they would had the tree been wider [older]). This is the tight grain that you are referring to.
And if you’re trying to match old flooring, the wood was cut totally differently years ago – quarter-sawn which is a much less economical use of logs than the current method. It looks quite different from new lumber because the grain shows up in a cross-cut pattern.
Good to know Senator Street. Thanks for that.
DIBS – It has been my experience that the flooring guys say that they can’t be sanded anymore when in fact they have lots of life left in them.
The story is that these 5/16″ floors are top nailed and the nail heads rip up the sandpaper at quite a quick pace.
So instead of changing the sandpaper twice as frequently, these guys tell you that they are too thin to sand – maybe trying to sell you on a new floor.
Where I’ve done repair work, I’ve picked up sections of the floor that I was told could not be sanded anymore and compared it to brand new flooring (of the same type – 5/16″) — they were almost identical.
The old growth, old flooring can not compare to anything that you can buy new today.
Call Verrazano. They’re great with repairs and patching.