What to Expect for Hardwood Floor Refinishing Costs

For many, Hardwood flooring has been a popular choice for most homeowners over the years. The natural wood appearance, variety of aesthetics and qualities, as well as lasting protection makes it a preferred material choice for many. Unfortunately, many West Long Branch, NJ homeowners wind up either paying far more than they should for professional service providers, or they try and maintain their wood floors by themselves. Considering that the typical person does not have the experience needed to repair wood surfaces successfully, it only winds up costing more to fix their mistakes. That is why GERS Flooring continues saving more area residents in keeping their floors looking their best throughout the year. Whether you need a more affordable choice in refinishing or you need peace of mind, we assist more households in the community than anyone else around. Before you begin to shy away at how much your refinishing costs will remain, it’s important to understand the process and the reasons why we charge what we do. Choosing us is always the number one way to save on complete hardwood flooring solutions.

What is the Average Cost of hardwood floor refinishing?

Hardwood floor refinishing can get especially challenging to set a baseline expense for, and that gets even trickier when discussing our region of the country. For the average household, you can expect your job to cost at least $1,200, although it likely will run higher. Refinishing hardwood floors requires a lot of labor, materials, and time. It is not something that can get rushed, especially when waiting for adhesives, sealers, and other fluids to finish drying. The final cost of your job is going to boil down to how much elbow grease is needed to sand it down successfully, as well as how quickly your boards take to their new adhesive surfaces. If you have a historic house or floors older than a few decades, you’ll probably have additional maintenance items to address. Renewing your floors is going to remain a higher expensed project over other renovations, but the results are well worth the cost. When you need affordable pricing and better-completed results, you need our team working for you.

Typical Price Per Square Foot

While you’re probably concerned over the total cost, you might want only to refurbish one room at a time, or you may prefer to focus on a specific area for renovations. Typically, most homeowners pay anywhere from $2 to $5 per square foot. The downside is that not all service providers will agree to small jobs. They may set a minimum required amount of square footage, or they may insist that you do at least several rooms at the same time. The bright side is that it would force the square foot cost to scale in your favor as you add more dimensions to the project. When you hire the right team of flooring experts, they can help you save the right way on better-completed jobs. Costs likely vary in our region, especially if there is a more expensive flooring type getting worked on or unusual working spaces. Contact us today to secure a free estimate to see what we can save you.

What Equipment Gets Used?

For the most part, your job will require little more than an industrial floor sander, hand tools, and shop vacuum to gather sawdust. We’ll also need to prepare the worksite so that the rest of the home doesn’t fill with debris while we work. While the number of machinery items we need is relatively few, any wood flooring contractor is going to depend on several items to finish your project. We use a broad range of sealants, stains, adhesives, and specialized cleaning products, as well as other chemical products.
Your floors require several different steps to complete successfully, and each one needs patience and skill to do right. Something as simple as not moving the sander quickly enough will leave your floors damaged beyond repair. Although some homeowners decide to attempt this repair by themselves, it likely won’t go great without the necessary equipment and product items, or the expertise to you them. Instead, you can avoid costly mistakes by hiring us today.

How Do Floors Get Sanded?

For broader, straight pathways, our team would use an industrial standing surface sander. These machines get pushed like your home vacuum cleaner, and we carefully cover as much of the surface as we can at this point. Your floors require at least three different applications of sanding, with the device using increasingly finer grades of sandpaper grit. We work our way from rough to fine, ensuring that we wear away every blemish. We may need to use an additional sanding screen, which stays helpful in cases where your fully sanded floors still retain some straggler splinters. Using the sanding screen, we can ensure the entire surface remains smooth. Once we get the larger regions sanded, we take to the corners and near baseboards with handheld sanding tools. Once we have it all worn away, we then clean up after each round of paper.

How Much Material Goes into My Job?

Tearing out and replacing worn floors requires shockingly few components. However, refinishing existing floors is another story. In addition to varying levels of sanding paper and the tools that use them, most of the materials needed are putties, hand tools, and different coating products to protect your floors correctly. If you need a specific shade or color-matched, that is going to take more resources.

The most significant indicator of material needs boils down to how many square feet your project remains. If your entire home needs to get redone, you’ll obviously need more materials over only doing your dining room area. An inexperienced service provider is likely going to need even more materials to make up for any mistakes that they make. And if they badly damage your boards, they may need to remove and replace it, making it even more challenging.

Does Floor Refinishing Take Long?

After calculating the costs, most homeowners remain concerned with how long their job is going to take to finish. Many residents decided to schedule a contractor service company just before a long vacation, or while they are planning on leaving town. However, what they don’t realize is that how long it takes to complete their project can vary from a few hours to several days. It all comes down to the experience and quality of the contractor, as well as the size and scope of the work required. If you have floors that barely qualify for refinishing services, they will need a ton of time and effort to make them look new again. On the other hand, if you have a residence that sees hardly any daily foot traffic, it might not be so bad.
Your timetable also includes how much prep work your job site needs, and accounts for any missed steps the homeowner could have taken. The best way to know for sure how much time is needed is scheduling an in-home consultation with us today.

Should I Refinish or Replace Floors?

Many residents want to know if the cost to refinish is any savings compared with a complete replacement. And unfortunately, the answer is always “it depends.” According to floorshields.com If your floors are severely damaged, have needs that extend beyond the top surface layer, or have issues with their subfloor, you probably need to swap them out for new wood boards.  When your floors squeak, squeal, and groan with every step, improving their appearance isn’t going to help. Another factor that you may want to consider is the age of the floors, as they may have different sealing requirements over newer boards. If your original floor was installed in the 1970s or earlier, it likely relies on less durable wax coatings rather than modern sealants. Considering that wax wears out after a few months, you may find that the added maintenance costs aren’t worth the trouble. You may decide to have rip out the worn floors and replace them with new ones instead.

Are There Any Additional Costs?

Average estimated costs get based off of perfect working conditions. In the real world, however, perfect is likely not going to stay an option. If you have wood stairs, require several material coats, or have especially worn floors, you can expect your costs to increase. And if we must transition your surface from tile, carpet, and pad, or other floors first, it’s going to cost more to complete it all. Other considerations are whether or not you have accessibility needs that must get met, or need recoating services instead; you can see the total project costs rising higher. You must ensure that you know all of your potential working variables before signing a service agreement with your contractor. The other way to keep your job’s price lower is by hiring an experienced team of technicians, such as ours. GERS Flooring helps more residents save on floor refinishing services.

If you need more information then please visit: West Long Branch, NJ Gers Flooring Company. Please feel free to read our previous blog about benefit of laminate wood flooring.