Hardwood Floor Refinishing in Calgary

What a full refinish involves

We sand down through the old finish and into the top layer of wood, taking the scratches, the stains and every previous coating with it. The floor goes through progressively finer grits, the edges and corners are cut in by hand or with an edger, and then the whole floor is vacuumed and tacked before any finish goes down. If you want a colour change, stain goes on at that point. Then several coats of clear finish over top.

Bare wood is the moment the finish choice actually matters. Water based finishes dry fast, stay clear, and let you back into the room sooner. Oil based finishes amber over the years, which some people want on oak and some people do not, and they take longer to cure. Calgary being as dry as it is works in your favour on both counts: coats flash off quickly here compared to a coastal city, so a refinish that takes a week somewhere humid often takes less.

Is your floor a candidate

Solid hardwood can only be taken back to bare wood a limited number of times before the wear layer above the tongue runs out. Standard 3/4 inch solid strip has room for several full sandings across its life, and most Calgary floors from the 1960s and 1970s have had one at most, so there is usually plenty left. The floors we turn down are the ones that were sanded twice by previous owners and are now sitting on a thin wear layer, and the engineered floors from the 1990s and 2000s where the veneer is too thin to touch.

We check before we quote. That means looking at a floor vent or a threshold where the board profile is visible, at how proud the nails are sitting, and at what previous work has already taken off. If the answer is that your floor has one refinish left in it, you should know that before you spend it, because that changes whether the right move today is a sand-back or a recoat that buys you another eight or ten years.

The other thing we look for is what the floor is doing seasonally. A floor that gaps every February and closes up in May is behaving normally for this climate and can be refinished. A floor with gaps that never close, or boards that have started to lift, has something else going on that has to be sorted out first.