Can we save our original parquet floors?

there is also a trick to asking contractors questions. if you begin asking a guy who pulls up in a van that has giant letters on it that say NORWEGIAN WOOD FLOORS too may questions, they will answer them to gain your confidence but after a while they may look at you funny (they are at a point in their careers where they tell us how it is done). ask those people a few specific questions about the thin wood and finishes and let them tell you what finishes they like and see if that suits you. the real questions are for the other people who may come into your sphere, the ones we are not sure about. when we ask the ones we are not sure about pointed questions, if they cannot answer them, they will make you out to be the bad person. i have seen it happen on jobs where they walk out on the customer, blaming the customer and calling them a pain in the neck. you do not want those people in your life.

and this is what you have to be aware of with something like this, where there is a chance someone sands it too thin; it might look good the day you finish but might have problems later, like the edges popping up (like loose veneer) or cracking and it they are thin and crack they will lift.

OP, i just reread your last reply. you said that you met with a flooring guy who says he can sand this floor. if that is what you want to do, i would check the background on the person who says he can sand them – and then speak to some others. People on here are recommending carlos. check his reviews and call him and talk to him. also, call one of the bigger name floor companies. One of the ones that drives around the city with their names on the vans; Norwegian Wood, Sullivan Brothers, or perhaps the guy i list above (i have a feeling these people are pricier than carlos). Those people putting their names out there on the vans, they are the top tier companies doing this and they cannot risk screwing something like this up and having it all over the internet.

a lot of what you have to do when looking for a specialist is learn how to dismiss the bs’ers. as a contractor, i know how to do that but a lot of people on here, especially those who have not been through a renovation before, do not understand what to look for when sourcing a real professional and then they come on here with their problems. you need that pro. here are some tips:

1. see if they do other things. for this floor you need someone who does just floors. not a generalist (i was once a generalist). if they show up in a van that does not look like it is carrying just flooring equipment or they have paint on their clothes as if they were painting a wall the day before, be careful. ask questions and try to see if they do something else. if they do, dismiss them.

2. i said it above, look for someone who advertises that they do floors; this is important.

3. Get the person to converse about what they do. if you begin asking them questions and they are evasive or look away or seem unsure, they have not been doing this a long time. the person you want to do THESE floors has been doing floor every working day for the past 8 years or more – 5 of those on their own – at minimum. at that point of dealing with customers and buying things in a supply house, they will know how to talk about this as if they do it every day. if they can’t, they have not been doing it everyday. its simple.

4. ask them about finishes. see what they recommend. see if you can get them to talk about brands as well (i like Basic Coatings for my house. i used it on a stair case 9 years ago and the stairs look new today; bona is a mass market product). most people have gone on to water base now and that is fine. so ask how many coats you should out down (of water base); the answer is 4. ask how many can be put down in a day. i have not done a floor in years but even i know the cans say 2 coats in a day. if he says anything different tell him you read the directions on a container and it said 2. ask why he said something different (and maybe there is a product out there that allows for 3). a lot of inexperienced people and people who care more about their wallets than the customer will rush jobs like this by forcing more coats in a day. these have between 2 and 3 hour dry times (there is a way to check if it is dry) and if they try to put say three coats on in a day or too soon, it may not have dried properly underneath. these products and paints fail because people over coat too soon, while the paint underneath is still wet (it will look dry but it is wet underneath). the people who treat finishing this way are in this for one thing; fast money. beware.

5. ask what grits they screen between coats with and how many times they screen. it is not necessary to screen between all coats. i would consider after the first and before the last. grits should be 180 or 220. most people say 220.

6. ask if they have insurance and right before you sign the contract with them, ask for a certificate of insurance. then call the agent and ask if that insurance covers floor sanding. not all insurance will cover floor sanding and there is a reason for this; people sand too thin and ruin the floors.

if someone gets nasty with you, especially when you ask for the insurance cert, that is a big red flag. they may balk at having to have a cert sent to you (we don’t get asked often; i don’t carry any with me) but if they refuse to send one, don’t do work with them.

this is the best i can tell you.

Efbk, all of these guys use a hand held edger. But these edgers are monsters. The handheld tools i am referring to are for finer wood work. They wont be so aggresive.

Op is not going to find a floor person to sand with hand held stuff. They need a good woodworker. Some one who has refinished bar tops or something. If you can sand a bartop without leaving divets, you can do a floor.

I was one of the Carlos fans, pretty sure they did all the edges with hand held tools. This was 4 years ago, so could be wrong. Our floors were a mess, (previous owner had laid 3 inches of cement and tile over some areas) and he was very good about working with us to save as much as possible. His number, 646-418-0925

You will end up screening. If it were my house, i would use the big festool rotex and get on my hands and knees and sand it. Keep in mind, some of us have to sand veneers so we can deal with thin stuff.

If i can find time when my son is off from school this week i might make a video on how to deal with a patch or blend.

Thank you all for your thoughts and recommendations. When I went back over the weekend, I lifted up a couple of the parquet “keys” and was shocked at how thin some of them were… In the photo you can see on the left the new 5/16″ parquet, then 2 slats of original parquet – one looks to be 3/8″ and one is only about 1/8″!!… Before I did this I met with a floor contractor and he told me the floor could be sanded, but said that his company uses even bigger sanders than the Home Depot sanding machines (but I forgot to ask if these larger machines they take off more or less of the floor – anyone know?), and said his company does not do hand sanding or use handheld tools… A second flooring guy told me the same over the phone.

So with that knowledge, what do you y’all think? Not sure how they can sand if parts (not all) of the floor are 1/8″ thick, with no real way to tell which parts are that thin and which are taller. I’ll be trying to get someone else in there to take another look, maybe Carlos since 2 people recommended him. Thank you!

[Parquet_floor_comparison](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:Yk87:parquet_floor_comparison.jpg.jpg)

I was wrong about a few things i said in the post above, regarding the cost to do a small job.

i spoke to Patrick O’connor at DCJ Flooring Corp.

he told me they will do a small room and there are no minimums. he did tell me what he gets per sq foot but i am not posting it here. he also said he is not adverse to screening but would not give a price per sq ft and said that is based more on time as opposed to sq footage. he also told me that at this point, most of what they do is water base – so it moves faster. no sending a guy back and forth.

i know he does good work. he will work in brooklyn, but the majority of his work is manhattan. he carries a lot of insurance (to suit the big buildings).

Steve, you’re correct, we went with a water-based polyurethane– Bona Seal Classic, I think. Carlos also first put down a natural stain after sanding, which was to keep the old nails from oxidizing/rusting into the wood, if I recall correctly. Just want to point out that we largely went with the water-based due to odor/VOC concerns, as we were a few days from moving into the floor below, and also because we had used the water-based Bona on our old floors. Carlos left the water vs. oil decision up to me; he also does oil-based but said it would take a bit longer, and also longer to “off-gas.”

The three days of work were actually spread out over around a week or so, mostly based to my own scheduling issues, which Carlos was able to work around. He was able to get at least two coats of the water-based done in a day, and I think we only went with three coats of the Bona “finish,” not four.

I would also recommend Carlos wood floors. We had very damaged floors and he did a very nice job with them.. Not everything could be saved, but he spent time going through everything with us so we understood what had to be replaced, what could be saved though might have some discoloration and what would come up fine. We wanted to keep as much of the original floors as possible, and he worked with us to make that happen.

thank you for that acknowledgment victorian.

victorian: 3 days sounds fast. may i ask, what did they use? did they actually seal them with some modern high end product or use a traditional seal and finish process? (in wood work there is a “seal” coat and “finish” coats – in general – but some of these modern things may mix the terminology. and there are commercially purchased sealers and sealers we make ourselves by cutting oil finish with spirits; wood that will get water base poly can be sealed with unwaxed shellac; there may be others ). is that water base product? the reason i ask is, with water base two coats of finish can go on in a day; with oil, it is one per day with a minimum 18 hour dry but often 24 hours. so that stretches a job to like 5 days, with stain. all this assumes 4 coats of finish for water base and 1 coat of sealer and two coats of finish for oil. it also looks like water base finish in the photos.

OP, there is nothing wrong with modern water base finishes and if i did my house over, that is what i would use (albeit a very hi gh priced water based finish). BUT there are people who feel we can put modern water base finish over old oil base finish (which is what yours is). i have never done that in my own house nor on a customer’s house. years ago we were told not to do things like this. my instinct is that to work the already sanded area and recoat, you want to stay with oil. that is what i would do in my own house. modernists might have ways around that and they might be right. if someone were to use a modern water base here, a lot of tinting would have to be done to match the old amber color. stick to oil.

op, i did check on the thickness of this kind of flooring. it starts at 5/16″. i am not sure what the old stuff began at but possibly it has been 5/16″ all along.

i could not talk to my neighbor about what you are facing due to the rain last night. today i will try to walk over and run a lot of what i said by him to get a sense of how or if flooring contractors would want to tackle it and where costs might go.

(victorian, i did not realize who you were until i looked at the photos. glad to see you have most if not all of this behind you).

Just wanted to post some before and after photos. (Please note that the before photos also show a lot of construction dust from the electrical rewiring; that sub-contractor didn’t put down plastic, but the floors were in pretty rough condition beforehand.) [Before2](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:UvhG:before2.jpg.jpg) [Before3](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:UVgk:before3.jpg.jpg) [After1](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:Wpqz:after1.jpg.jpg) [After2](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:McYS:after2.jpg.jpg) [After3](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:F84H:after3.jpg.jpg)

First off, absolutely 100% try to save those beautiful parquet floors (which means talking to a flooring expert and not a general contractor). Secondly, listen to everything Steve/doorsbythetinkerswagon has to say– he helped me out with some apartment unit entry door issues and his breadth of knowledge about brownstones, and construction in general, is impressive. Third, though, I actually had the floors of a rental unit sanded/screened, stained, and given three coats of seal by Carlos Wood Floors. He also repaired a few pieces of missing trim and even fixed a spongy subfloor outside a bathroom, and he was incredibly efficient and reasonably priced. The entire space was around 1300 sq. ft. and I believe it took a total of 3 days, which probably could have been done in two days if we were doing it in warmer weather when the sealing coats would have dried quicker. A couple caveats: The parquet was a simpler pattern (from the 1920s or so) and this was for a rental so I wasn’t being extra focused on details. Carlos’s info is on this site, but here’s his email: carloswoodfloors@gmail.com.

so just to help people understand what i describe above in the post above, the back and forth with a highly skilled workman who might have to drive an hour to get to this sort of job and struggle to find parking, something like this, something that takes and hour or two or maybe three hours each visit could cost that person an entire day. basically – going to our jobs is not like flipping a computer on. so if a flooring contractor were to send someone out to do this repair, he has to pay that person for the day. for each trip. and then the owner has to make something on that. so a repair like this goes to $2400 easy, if not more. How much is it to sand the living room? $2.50 per sq foot? (I no longer know) x 250 sq ft and the answer is $625 (but the floor guys must have a minimum to drag that equipment in… $1,000.

if my neighbor really needed something like this done and i could schedule it on my days off or when i were doing shop work and could take a break to spend two hours here and three hours there over five or six days, to complete this, i could ha ve it done for $900 with materials at my hourly rate. it kind of makes sense to sand.

if i see my floor sanding neighbor i will ask him if they will screen only; if they have a minimum to sand a 250 sq foot room. and what his per sq foot rate is. i sent him to someone in manhatten, in a walk up about 4 years ago and it was 4.25 per sq foot. (and the job came out beautiful but my friend thought pricey). i will see if i can get him to comment to what i say above and the challenges op might have finding someone to do this-

The sanded part can be blended and its easy. But its not a time to experiment and op is not a guinea pig.

That kind of blend on a damaged floor is what i want to make a video of. It can be done but people dont know that and i dont think the flooring people want to do it as there is some room for error (it is an art) and a lot of back and forth hassle (sand to 120, seal, next day sand with 180 and coat, next day screen entire floor 60- 180, coat and tone the repair if needed, next day screen entire with 180 or 220, final coat). A lot of back and forth for little money. And money is usually the driver for such a finish repair, so a customer is not going to offer up a lot of money anyway, not like 3/4 the price of a full sand. That is why i suspect doing it is not advertised.

Ops contractor should never have touched this floor. A contractor needs to know when to say your money is better spent elsewhere and have the guts to say it

I have to agree with what Steve says above – I looked at that sanded patch and immediately thought, I wouldn’t have done that, this floor didn’t need that. I’m not a wood working pro, just someone who has lived in, and been in, many brownstone apartments and coops with just that sort of old oak parquet, and none of them ever looked like they had ever been sanded down a lot like that patch.

Many of the newer floorboards I’ve lived with in other places have looked like they were recently aggressively sanded, with the unfortunate markings left by the inexpert use of big sanding machines in some places.

There’s a difference between sanding the hell out of wood floor (or wood furniture), and carefully fixing the finish and any missing pieces – which is all these floors need to stay beautiful over the decades. I don’t think the sanded portion should be impossible to blend in with a more gentle job on the rest of the floor – meaning, I wouldn’t let that sanded patch be the reason to rip these floors out.

These are really beautiful floors. I hope you choose to invest in their continued life!

ok, from the missing pieces in those floors, they do not look to be 1/8″ thin. they look a little heavier. maybe 3/16 or a full (they begin at 5/16? or 1/4″? i have a piece downstairs leftover from a patch and might measure it later. also, i should not tell you this but there is a way to sand parquet floors with a drum sander – two passes, one in each direction (yes, i have done it). but since your contractor brought that home depot special sheet sander in that i see in the back room (i have never used one of those but a neighbor tried and it was useless) i suspect he does not realize you can sand parquet with a drum. don’t tell him this – he might screw it all up. and if you have 3/16″, i would not think that vibrating sander he brought in would damage them. he does not want to use the vibrating sander because he realized he will be there until July doing it and he is probably afraid to take a drum sander to these floors.

your floors look really nice. a couple of things:

if you call a flooring pro, they will not tell you that you can screen these of f because there is no money in screening (and it will not remove scratches in the wood, only in the finish). and they still have to return to coat and coat and that is a hassle on a small job. if my floors were in this condition i would resist sanding. it is a destructive operation. (and i am considering what to do to my living room floor as the previous owner damaged it with a drum sander, leaving lines from a bad drum or something as they dragged it haphazardly around in almost a radius from the outside to the center of the room; some people do dumb things)

and this: some floor guys do really beautiful work in top end houses. but some are not wood workers. they cannot cut the parallalogram patches so well and you have to be willing to get on your hands and knees to do it, usually beginning with a piece cut to a perfectly snug fit (width wise) on the table saw; a very long piece, enough to do it all; cut extra pieces, some a little snugger and some a little looser and bring them all to the job). i have seen them where they did a rolls royce job on the floor finishing and an ox cart job on the patches. one right in the threshold between two rooms, in the border, looked like a poorly fit jigsaw puzzle. what they have not figured out is that you have to take your time doing the first cut and once you have your settings it will go fast. instead they rush from the get go and they come out with as many gaps as the london tube. and sometimes with this patchwork, you have to be willing to discard your mistakes (and as i said above cut wood of varying widths from the get go).

and i am still not sure about what happen in that hallway but if it were my house and screening does not remove what is there, i would use a dewalt sander starting with the finest grit that does the job (try 80 or 100 or 120; if it works, go with it and once you have it off you can screen or continue with the dewalt to 180 or 220), if you did not want to take ALL the finish off. if you wanted to take it all off that is something else.

I think your floors are beautiful, and would definitely see if I could save them if they were mine. As to the difference in the entryway, remember that in places like that (as with many water damaged darkened places in the center of floors that people intend to cover with rugs), they don’t have to come out as perfectly (much as we might like that) as the parts of the floors one will see – as you will probably want to cover a good deal of the entryway flooring with a rug or other covering to catch that rain and dirt that people will continue to track in after you have finished the renovation.