Minneapolis Floor Sanding

After this job I really considered buying a new machine. I like my current one, but if I invested in a little bit better machine I think I could cut the floor faster.  I actually tested one out a couple of days later.  This is a maple floor and they are very dense woods.

Plus, most maple hardwood floors in Minneapolis are very unlevel.  Most maple floors are in houses that are close to 100 years old and the foundations have settled, the boards have expanded and contracted a lot and they have been refinished numerous times.  If I get a better sand though with a new machine, then it is worth it.  I love making a floor look as good as possible and I am constantly searching for new products and techniques to improve.

So, back to the story.  These hardwood floors were in a three unit duplex in South Minneapolis.  I knew they would be difficult.  They had a really tough finish on the floor so it took a while to get it all sanded off.  Plus there were radiators, and we had a patch area to fix.  When we removed the area that needed to be patch we found two pipes, which I have never encountered before.  But you learn something new on every job.

We patched in the wood and I couldn’t even tell where it was once we sanded and buffed the floors.  We used oil base on this job with a coat of sealer.  I tacked the floor the best I could, but on these job sites that are getting remodeled and old maple floors with gaps that hold dirt it is really hard to get a perfectly smooth finish.  In the end though the owner was happy so that is all that matters to me.  If I make the customer happy and I did my best then I feel I did my job.

Going into this job I was a little scared. I had sanded and removed paint from hardwood floors before, but I never had anything this bad. The floor was totally covered with black paint. I don’t know why somebody thought it was a good idea to do it, but they did, and it just didn’t look good. [click to continue...]

We did this job a while ago, but I just found these pictures. This is 2.25 maple hardwood floors in a old 1920s house in South Minneapolis, close to Hiawatha. They had paint on them and I really didn’t know if we could get the paint off. It was only one room, the rest of the floors didn’t have paint on them. But as you can see from the picture we got the paint off and they actually cleaned up nice. I really don’t like to remove paint because it takes a lot of low grit paper to get through it and it is really dirty to sand through. But, if the situation comes up, then you have to try to do your best. Plus, if it is lead base paint it is dangerous to sand. We ended up using a water base finish on this maple floor.

We started this job on Wednesday and we finished it on Thursday.  This house was in South Minneapolis off of Nicollet Ave S.  It had 1.5 inch maple hardwood floors.  They had a really old varnish on the floor, that was on top of an oil based polyurethane. [click to continue...]

We started this job on Monday and we finished it on Wednesday. It was almost 900 square fee of 1.5 inch red oak hardwood flooring in a 1930 duplex off of Lyndale Ave in South Minneapolis. The house was is pretty good condition, it just needed fresh paint and the hardwood floors to be refinished to bring it back to life. [click to continue...]

This oak hardwood floor was is South Minneapolis close to Edina. The floors were in pretty bad shape, but they just needed a good sand to clean them up.

The picture above is a pretty ugly water stain.  They don’t come out most of the time, but there are a couple things you can do to remove them.  On this one, I sanded the floor completely, then I took a wet rag, and got the stain wet a few times, let it dry out, then got it wet again.

After it dried, I sanded the stain out.  I don’t recommend doing this if you are not a professional floor mechanic.  As you can see from the picture below we got the stain out.

It took some effort but it was worth it.  From the picture below you can see the floor is cleaned up and the has the final finish coats on it.

We did these floors last week.  They were 1.5 inch red oak hardwood, they we beat up, but they did have any urine or water stains in the bedrooms, living room, or dining room.  The finish was not to bad and they were a lower grade oak, which is darker then a select grade.  This was in north Minneapolis and it is common in those houses to have lower grade hardwood flooring.

We started sanding them and they cleaned up about as good as I thought.  However, if you look at the picture below these floors are in really bad shape.  This is the kitchen, it had tile, and laminate flooring over the hardwood.  The owners removed it.  It is very common for hardwood floors in kitchens that have been covered with another type of flooring to be very water damage.

I can’t remove water damage completely that is affordable to most customers.  We can do our best, but it your probably going to have to live with what you have, unless you want to replace the wood or stain it dark.  I wish I could, but sometimes you have to play the hand your dealt.

But as you can see, we got the rooms cleaned up and they look a lot better.  Once they paint the trim and the walls the house will look very nice.

The kitchen didn’t clean up perfectly just as I thought, but if you its better then it was.  I always address this is customers at the estimate if there are water or urine stains.

Here is what maple hardwood floors look like.  Maple is a lot lighter looking wood vs. oak, or Douglas fur.  Most houses build before the 1940s are going to have maple hardwood floors.  They don’t have a lot of grains and are usually a more dense wood then oak.  They are difficult to sand and refinish, but they can really look nice.

The two picture above are maple floors in a 1920s, two story.  They are not the original floors, they were installed years back.  But we also sanded and coated the dining room and living room floors.  In the picture below you can see the difference in look.  The older floors have more gaping and are a little darker because they have aged.

The two picture below are red oak hardwood floors.  Look at all the grains in the wood.  There all over the place.  As a result, oak is going to hide more imperfections then maple.  These oak floors were in Minneapolis, in a really nice 1940s colonial two story over by Minnehaha Creek.  I loved the house and the customers were really nice.  They just had a bedroom that they were turning into an office.

In the picture above this is one coat of sealer, but an oil finish coat has not been applied yet.  Below, we just got done putting the final coat on the floors.  It looks nice.

This is a job we finished today in Brooklyn Park.  This floor is inch and a half wide red oak hardwood.  As you can see from the first picture the floors were not in good shape.  My client wanted to save some money, clean up the floors and protect them.  It was for a rental property so we didn’t want to spend too much money, but wanted to make them look nice.

In this situation I would usually to a complete refinish, but if money is an issue, I would then recommend a buff and re coat.  The difference is a refinish will completely sand the floor and remove the finish from the hardwood, but a buff and coat will only lightly sand the finish coat.  After we buff or sand, we then apply the finish.  In this case it was an oil based semi-gloss finish.

As you can see from the third picture the floors look a lot better.  They are not in perfect shape and would be a lot cleaner with a complete refinish, but sometimes people are just going for this look, they want to save money and it only takes a day to complete vs two or three for a total refinish.  A lot of homes could be buff and recoat on oak hardwood floors in Brooklyn Park MN, it just depends on what your going for.

Personally I like the refinish look a lot more because I know how much it can clean the floor.  However, I do own rental properties and I know that tenets can be very hard on the floors.  I buff and coated one of my own rentals last year and it looks a lot better.  I did refinish it completely the year before so it was already in good shape.