Refinishing the wood floors in your home can create a fantastic floor if it is done correctly. Wood floor refinishing involves more than just sanding the floor's surface and coating it with a sealer. Hiring a flooring contractor to do the job is often the best way to get the floor you want in your home. 

Old Wood Flooring

Many homes have old wood flooring hiding under the carpeting or vinyl flooring that someone installed later. In many cases, the flooring might be hardwood, pine, or some other wood that was beautiful when it was installed. These wood floors get damaged, painted over, and often other materials are laid over them, and the floors are sometimes lost to time. 

Wood floor refinishing contractors can often bring the life back to old wood floors if you know it is there, and it may not take as much work as you might think. If you discover a wood floor under your carpet or other floorings, you may want to have a flooring contractor come and look at it to determine if they can restore it. Often, wood floor refinishing is possible even if the floor has damage that requires a few boards to be changed or other repairs to be made structural. 

Bring Back The Beauty

Once a wood floor is discovered, and you have decided to refinish it, you will need to remove the carpet or other flooring first. Pull off what you can, but be careful not to gouge or damage the wood in the process. 

When the floor is completely uncovered, a wood floor refinishing contractor can start to sand the floor's surface to remove adhesives and other damage on the surface of the wood. The sanding is done in stages using finer and finer sandpaper until the wood is smooth and there is nothing but clear wood grain showing. The goal is to remove the top layer of the wood, exposing the grain underneath. 

Sealing The Floor

After all the wood dust is carefully removed from the floor's surface, the wood floor refinishing contractor can seal the floor with a hard polyurethane that protects the wood and brings out the grain and structure of the wood. If you want to stain the wood, the contractor can do that before sealing it, but consider the options carefully because once the stain is on the wood, the only way to remove it is to resand the surface. 

Often sealing over the natural wood is the best way to get the best surface, and after a few coats of sealer, the floor will be scratch-resistant, durable, and will look great for years to come. 

Contact a company like Achterberg Hardwood Floors to learn more about wood floor refinishing.