Preserving the Character of Old Wood Floors
Boo, That’s great – do you have any pics of the finished floor?

Guest User | 6 years and 7 months ago
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Guest User | 6 years and 7 months ago
string(1) "3" string(6) "199384"
Hi all, I’ve searched the forums and didn’t see what I was looking for.
We’re renovating our brownstone and I am in love with the character (read dings and dents and gouges and scratches) of our existing wood flooring – most of which looks to be pine.
In all my Googling and oogling I’ve yet to find a site that talks about how to preserve the character of a floor while still giving it a touch up and correction. Some of the floors need to have deep gouges filled, large gaps filled, and rotten boards replaced for safety’s sake, but I’m not worried about making it look like they flaws aren’t there – I want to celebrate the history of those floors.
Does anyone have real world tips to how best to navigate this kind of process? What are some products you might recommend for filling gaps and gouges? Anything to avoid? I’m worried that our contractor seems to think it’s all or nothing: don’t touch or sand the ever loving grain out of the floors.
I’ve attached some images of the some of the floors.
[IMG_4658](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:4rpS:img_4658.jpg.jpg) [IMG_4656](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:n0LB:img_4656.jpg.jpg) [IMG_5002](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:4yHE:img_5002.jpg.jpg) [IMG_5003](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:NMdv:img_5003.jpg.jpg)

greenworks | 6 years and 7 months ago
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Don’t give up on finding a good floor person — we had our second floor’s original, full of character, Doug Fir planks refinished and there’s still plenty of character left to enjoy. It looks great — major issues resolved but plenty of “patina” left, even tho I pretty much abhor Doug Fir LOL.

Guest User | 6 years and 7 months ago
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@booisgolden, would you mind sharing who it was you worked with? Also, do you remember anything about their process?

greenworks | 6 years and 7 months ago
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I will happily share as soon as I get home and confirm that they completed the job to our liking (they had one coat left to do today — YES it’s that recent!). So far we LOVE the floor guys tho, but don’t want to jump ahead of the game and recommend someone when we may get home and find a mess.
We didn’t direct him too much because he seems to “get it” and – after living with floors that looked about the same as yours in some ways minus the rot for four years (some projects took longer for us to get to than we thought) we were going to be happy with what we got — he just used wood filler on a couple small holes made by our jerk (fired) electrician, then he went to it.
We didn’t have the rot/bigger holes that you have but downstairs we JUST uncovered original parquet with detailed maple/walnut inlay inlay in our dining/living room and he keeps some old boards around to do some necessary patching. He has a few other tricks up his sleeve too I think.

greenworks | 6 years and 7 months ago
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Just to be clear round one of floor refinishing was upstairs that he’s finishing today. We had 2000’s era engineered oak on our first floor that he demoed and that’s where we found the parquet with inlay — one we get estimate and strategy on repair that will be in a couple weeks.

cate | 6 years and 7 months ago
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What beautiful mantels you have. (Be sure to cover them before starting any work!) Are you sure your floors need refinishing? It’s hard to tell from the photos, but if the existing poly on them is in good condition, I would just leave them as is. Once you put down a few rugs the flaws won’t be so noticeable. We refinished our pine subfloors and they turned out beautifully. That was nine years ago and the finish is still going strong. Ours have patches and holes also and we feel it looks fine and just adds to the character. Pine floors are very soft so they get depressions even though the poly isn’t scratched. (We avoid wearing shoes in the house. The depressions can supposedly be lifted through steaming but you have to remove all the finish first and I can’t imagine what a job steaming out every spot would be.) The filler the refinishers put between the boards popped out quickly but some other more epoxy Bondo type stuff that was already on the floor filling holes was much more durable, until we had a toddler who picked it out by hand. In any case, you don’t want to over sand. If you do sand and refinish, in my experience four coats of highest-quality water-based poly looks great and is very durable. This article may be useful: https://www.brownstoner.com/interiors-renovation/old-wood-floors-refinish-replace-interior-design-renovation-ideas/ Good luck!

daveinbedstuy | 6 years and 7 months ago
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I just had old pine floors screened and they look beautiful. Using a floor buffing machine, they use a mesh screen and then just poly over. It removes the top layers of poly or shellac. When my brownstone parquet floors were done, Jose (917-355-7977) screened and poly’d them and they were great. [Thumbnail](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s2/:brownstoner:IiFS:thumbnail.jpeg.jpg)

slopefarm | 6 years and 7 months ago
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For the worst sections of the floor, consider raiding some well-preserved planks in a closet or an area that is not typically visible, so that any new planks you need to add (which will not match) will not be in highly visible areas. And yes, I agree with the comment above not to sweat the imperfections too much — it is part of the charm.

Guest User | 6 years and 7 months ago
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@daveinbedstuy – this is exactly what we’re looking for! Thank you. “Screened.” Who knew?

greenworks | 6 years and 7 months ago
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Ok feel like I can give full recommendation now — we used iFloor NY Hardwood Flooring — 347-359-8249. Everything was pretty easy with them, and they have experience with the hardwax oils etc as well as standard poly. I liked the fact that even though he was up to date on the modern aesthetic and techniques of some of the “newer” or new/old treatments, he understood that the modern aesthetic sometimes means keeping the character that comes with age.
When I was blathering on about using things like the Woca/Dinesen lye to get the yellow out of our Doug Fir, he simply suggested the Bona Nordic Seal, which he claimed would achieve the same effect without the $$$ and time. I was skeptical but in the end, it looks great and performed exactly as he said it would. It took the yellow away without getting too Scandi.
We are in the process of scheduling them for the parquet downstairs. May update you later but for now we’re really happy campers.