How to Refinish Wood Flooring?

With the passage of time, the wood flooring will gradually fade, and its surface gloss will gradually disappear. It will cost a lot of money to replace the wood flooring with a new one. As a result, many people will choose to refinish the solid wood flooring. The following content describes the specific steps of refinishing the wood flooring.

Empty the Room

Before refinishing the engineered hardwood flooring, you need to move out everything from the room. If a lot of sundries are piled up in the room, it will bring great difficulties to the construction. It should be noted that when moving out the items in the room, it is necessary to lift them first, and then move them out of the room. Do not push the items out of the room directly, which will cause the solid oak flooring to be worn or even damaged.

Clean the Wood Flooring

In order to make the new finish to adhere to the existing finish, all dust, stains, grease and so on must be removed from the wood flooring. When cleaning the engineered timber flooring, do not use hot soapy water or other homemade cleaners, these cleaners will damage the surface of the wood flooring. In addition, because these cleaners often contain a lot of water, will lead to wood flooring water swelling. Therefore, you need to use the special wood flooring cleaner to clean, this cleaner will not dissolve the existing finishes. For those stains that are difficult to clean, you can use an eraser or other soft object to rub the stains until they are removed.

Dry the Wood Flooring

After cleaning the wide plank wood flooring, you need to use a soft, dry towel to wipe the flooring. If you're in a hurry, you can also use a fan to dry the flooring. In addition, opening the doors and windows of the room can also speed up the drying speed of the oak wood flooring.

Gently Sand the Old Finish

As the water-based and oil-based finishes can not be well bonded with the existing finishes, you must use sandpaper to polish the existing finishes. This will leave a lot of scratches on the existing finish. The new finish will be able to well bonded with the existing finish through these scratches.

Vacuum the Dust

Use a vacuum cleaner to clean the dust on the floor. Do not use a broom to clean red oak hardwood flooring, as it will transfer dust into the gaps between the wood flooring.

Apply New Finish

After removing the dust from the surface of the waterproof wood flooring, you can start to apply a new finish to the surface of the wood flooring. These finishes generally dry in a few minutes, but they do not reach maximum hardness. About a week later, the hardness of the new finish will reach its maximum. When the finish is completely dry, you can walk on the painted wood flooring in your socks. But if you want to move furniture into the room, you need to wait more than three days.

Reference

OLDHOUSE, Refinishing Wood Floors | 7 Easy Steps