Old hardwood floors

[mollyanna58]

My house is around 80 years old. The floors haven't been refinished in at least 35 years.  They aren't horrible, but there are small gaps between a lot of the boards.  The floor has taken a lot of abuse from the dogs the past few years, and anytime one of them has had an accident or vomited, it seems to be where a gap is. 

I'm wondering if I might be better off replacing the floors instead of having them refinished.

Any thoughts on replacing vs. refinishing?

[busymom]

I'll be watching this thread, too. My parent's house has hardwood in the bedrooms, & I've noticed gaps between the boards that weren't there when I was a kid. Maybe when you live where there are 4 seasons, the floorboards shrink?   I can't blame it on animal damage, since they haven't had a dog in over 30 years...

[chiver78]

I'm a huge germophobe, and my stomach is kind of turning over just reading your OP.     sorry.....I'd replace, as tightly as possible while allowing normal expansion space, and make sure I sealed multiple layers over the whole surface. any future accidents or vomit should then be an easy cleanup.

fwiw, I love OLD hardwoods. wide plank pine? all over that. but the thought of animal accidents/vomit just really......ew.

[Bonny]

I'm afraid you're just going to have to bring in a couple of hardwood floor folks and get their opinion.

The first house that we bought here in the SF Bay Area was a REAL fixer. Not as old as your house (c 1959) but really beat up. Sadly they may have been the original buyers. Nicotine stained walls, a kitchen chock full of grease and 70s carpet so rotted by pet and potted plant floodings that it literally crumbled into your hands. Does the picture "Disgusting" enter into your mind?

We had all the carpeting removed and our hardwood floor guy wound up replacing about 25% of the flooring. The good news was that the floor had never been refinished so there was plenty of material but some of the staining was so deep it went all the way through the board (completely black). Once the floors were re-sanded you could not tell the difference between the old and new other than some of the nails in the old flooring were black around the edges.

I'd think a major issue in your situation is whether the same time of flooring can be found. I could see a situation whereby you might have to recycle flooring from a bedroom if you want to keep hardwood in the public areas like a living room and a hallway.

[Deleted]

Hardwood floors will expand and contract some with the weather but usually not enough to notice to much.

It's amazing what a good floor refinisher can do.

We had to steal a little bit of floor from under the stove to fill in a small patch where a cabinet had been and there was water damage. You would never know it has been patched in.

[thyme4change]

I can't imagine any floor that you could get today will last 80+ years.  Probably not even half that, unless you spend both arms and both legs.  I would stretch out the life of the floors you have now as long as possible.  The new floors don't have near the character.  

[ArchietheDragon]

My parent's house has old hardwood floors from the 1800s.  Wide board chestnut which definitely have charm, but also have a 1/4" to 1/2" gap between each board.   I remember many a Saturday morning after breakfast using a butter knife to pry the cheerios out from between the cracks.

[The Captain]

Aug 3, 2014 20:35:44 GMT -5 @xmascookie said:

Hardwood floors will expand and contract some with the weather but usually not enough to notice to much.

It's amazing what a good floor refinisher can do.

We had to steal a little bit of floor from under the stove to fill in a small patch where a cabinet had been and there was water damage. You would never know it has been patched in.

I've seen floors that you would swear were trashed restored beautifully.  Check out experts in your area, Yelp them if you can and check out their portfolio.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Our floors are 80-90 years old. The living room was terrible so we had it stripped and refinished for $630. No boards had to be replaced and the guy raved about how good a condition they were in beyond cosmetics, he said you don't see that level of quality in flooring today.

We ripped up the carpet in our bedroom and the kiddo's. We examined the floors in both rooms nad they held up a lot better than the floor in the living room so we decided for now we're not going to refinish. That means the bedrooms are lighter due to the original finish compared to the living room but it doesn't bother us.

[Anne_in_VA]

I'll be watching this thread too since we know there's hardwoods under the carpet in the house but we also know that the former owner had multiple dogs (she did rescues) that allowed them to pee and poop in the house.  I'm thinking that they installed carpet over the wood because the wood floors are ruined but eventually we'll have to pull the carpet to see if they can be refinished.

[Deleted]

Aug 4, 2014 9:39:03 GMT -5 Anne_in_VA said:

I'll be watching this thread too since we know there's hardwoods under the carpet in the house but we also know that the former owner had multiple dogs (she did rescues) that allowed them to pee and poop in the house.  I'm thinking that they installed carpet over the wood because the wood floors are ruined but eventually we'll have to pull the carpet to see if they can be refinished.

if you know there's hardwood underneath, I don't understand why you would wait.  the thought of living with carpet that you know dogs peed and pooped on makes me .

my parents had gorgeous hardwood throughout the entire house that they covered with carpet.  after they both died, I ripped up the carpet and had the floors refinished and they were gorgeous.  I couldn't believe we grew up with icky carpet instead of the hardwood.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Carpet vs hardwood seems to be one of those trends/preferences that comes and goes. We couldn't believe our floors were covered up either but that was the preference. I'm sure it'll swing back around again by the time this house is sold.

I like hardwood a lot better. DH has really been resistant to it because he insists he needs the feel of carpet underneath his feet.

But after pushing him to do it he's admitted the house looks A LOT better and that he feels a lot better. Ripping all that carpet up made me realize carpet is never truly clean, you're not aware of all the stuff you can't see when it's attached to the floor.

[Bonny]

Yep, in the 1970s hardwood was considered very "old fashioned". I don't think it really came back until the 1990s unless you had a very old house.

Besides being beautiful I like hardwood because my allergies do a lot better with them.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I want to know who made kitchen/bathroom carpet popular so I can smack them.

We figured out based on the color scheme and pattern the carpet in our kitchen had to be late 70's-early 80's. When we had it ripped up and laminate put down the guy commented he couldn't believe there was enough made in that pattern to cover an entire room.

[resolution]

When we refinished our floors we pulled some of the replacement wood from the inside of closet floors. There may also be some under the kitchen or bathroom linoleum floors if you have them.

[Deleted]

When I first saw my house, I knew it had hardwood under the carpet because when they installed the carpet, they left a small part of hardwood exposed at the front door. The carpet was in pretty good shape, but pulling it up to see the floors was the first thing I did after I closed on the house. I was pleased to discover that the carpet wasn't hiding damaged floors, they were in great shape. Now that I have foot problems, thick carpet is more comfortable but I love my wood floors too much to cover them up.

For several years I had 2 large dogs in the house. When they were puppies and being house trained, their crates had pans in the bottom to catch any accidents. Once they were fully trained, they didn't have accidents so my floors made it through unscathed.

My house was built in the early 60's and the floors are original. I don't have gaps between the boards. Thank goodness, because I couldn't afford to replace the floors with the same thing. I have a friend that just spent several thousands of dollars on wood flooring for part of her downstairs area. She complained to me that even at that price, only the top parts of the boards are hardwood.

I'd check into having the floors repaired and refinished. I think replacing them with something as close to the original as you can get is going to be very expensive.

NomoreDramaQ1015, the only part of my house that didn't have carpet was the kitchen. There was even an octagon cut piece (I guess to match the dimensions of the bay window behind it) taped down under the kitchen table. That was the first time I'd seen carpet EVERYWHERE. I had a little boy, no way was I leaving carpet in the kids' bathroom. I didn't leave it in my bathroom either. What a terrible idea!

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

The guy that did our floor said the problem sometimes with refinishing hardwood that old is that if you need to replace a board it's very hard to find current pieces that will blend in.   A popular option is to poach boards in good condition from less used places like the inside of a closet.   Then the wood blends since it's original.

You obviously wouldn't get a whole new floor out of that, but it's something to consider. 

We ended up not needing a single board replaced. Which the guy said is amazing considering the age of the floor.

[kittensaver]

My original hardwood floors are 65 years old and look great. But in all fairness, they DID spend a few decades under w2w carpeting . Like Bonny and some other folks, we tore up the old carpeting and let the floors "shine through" to keep down the allergens and other immune system triggers. We now have only large area rugs under the beds and in the living room and TV room.

We needed significant repairs in a number of places in the house when we tore out the old heating system (gaps in the floor left by departing wall units and floor vents), and we found a contractor who was able to provide not only the repairs but an exact match to the existing floor. So it is very possible to find a competent person or company to fix your floors "like new." I would definitely talk to a few folks and get a few quotes before I spent the $$$$$$ to re-floor the house.

Good luck whatever you decide!

[Deleted]

I think one of the good things about people having installed wall to wall carpet over wood floors is that the carpet "protected" the wood from a lot of wear and tear, leaving them in good shape for whoever came along and preferred the wood floors over the carpet.

[Anne_in_VA]

Singlemom - The carpet wasn't peed on but we think the wood floors were and got ruined. Then they installed carpet over the wood floors. DH pulled up the carpet in a corner and saw the wood floors underneath, but we don't know what the rest of the floors look like. A neighbor mentioned that the former owner had many dogs that she left in the house all the time and never let them outside. Obviously, they did their business in the house so we don't know if the floors are beyond repair or if they can be redone. Until we have enough money saved to replace them, I won't pull up the carpet since if they're trashed I won't be able to do anything about them.

[tskeeter]

Aug 3, 2014 18:21:39 GMT -5 mollyanna58 said:

My house is around 80 years old. The floors haven't been refinished in at least 35 years.  They aren't horrible, but there are small gaps between a lot of the boards.  The floor has taken a lot of abuse from the dogs the past few years, and anytime one of them has had an accident or vomited, it seems to be where a gap is. 

I'm wondering if I might be better off replacing the floors instead of having them refinished.

Any thoughts on replacing vs. refinishing?

Mollyanna, as the wood dried out in your house over the last 80 years, the wood shrank.  That's what wood does as it dries out.  Refinishing the floors can repair scratches and put a protective finish on your old floor, but it's not going to fix the gaps between boards. 

The best way that I can think of to close the gaps and clean debris from the gaps in your old floors are to take up the hardwood floors, mill a new tongue and groove on each piece of flooring, reinstall the flooring, and patch in the additional flooring you will need with flooring salvaged from other parts of your house.

Now, what I've talked about is probably really expensive.  Just off the cuff, take the price for installing a new hardwood floor in the same space.  Then multiply by 5 to 10.  That should get you pretty close to a realistic cost to carefully remove the floors to minimize how much of the flooring breaks, mill new tongues and grooves to clean and even up edges, and then re-install the dry, brittle, breakage prone flooring back to where it came from (I expect you'd have to hand drill a hole in the flooring for each nail before the flooring is installed so that you don't break off the tongue when you nail down the floor).

As an alternative, you could just rip out the existing antique flooring and replace it with modern hardwood flooring.  But, several years from now, the wood will have dried and you will probably have bigger gaps between floor boards that you have today.  (Old flooring was quarter sawn to minimize how much it shrinks, and the growth rings in old, old lumber are much closer together than the growth rings in modern, plantation raised lumber.  The tighter growth rings also minimize shrinkage.)   

[mollyanna58]

Thanks for all the input. 

I called a local floor guy. I'll see what he recommends.