A lovely room with hardwood floors changes your home appearance while enhancing its value. Indeed, it’s perfectly understandable to include the presence of hardwood floors as a determining factor in your home-hunting. However, the cost of refinishing hardwood floors is something that needs proper consideration. Not to worry, we’ll shed some light on it.
Generally, refinishing your hardwood floors is a less expensive endeavour. Should you choose to replace them, it’ll involve extra wood and the complete removal of the existing one. This literally means you’ll have to pay more to replace a hardwood floor than refinish it. Even if you have the wood on standby, refinishing will still be affordable than replacing everything.
Refinishing hardwood floors includes sanding down blemishes or the exterior part of the finish. Afterward, re-applying the colour treatment is next, and then sealing — often with an accompanying topcoat finish. This process is all it takes for your floor to have a new stunning look.
If you’re considering refinishing hardwood floors in Canada, then this is for you. This article discusses everything you need to know about the cost of refinishing hardwood floors in Canada.
Benefits of Refinishing Your Hardwood Floors
It is an undisputed fact that hardwood floorings are durable. Besides that, they are a natural material that adds value and stunning beauty to your home.
But with time, wear and tear will occur. When this happens, it often comes with damages that takes away the good looks of your floor. If you notice any scratches or scuffs in your hardwood flooring, one option is to replace the floors. However, in most cases, refinishing your floor will restore the floor to its former beauty.
Below are a few benefits of refinishing your hardwood floors:
It Saves Money
A poor-quality hardwood floor needs notable maintenance to delay the damage progression. However, If you decide to replace your hardwood floor,you’ll be facing a higher cost.
On the other hand, professional refinishing is way more affordable than replacing with a new floor. Also, it helps lessen the necessary maintenance and cut costs significantly.
It Adds Value to Your Home
Your home floor will always make an impression at first look. Whether you’re going to put it up for sale soon or you’re entertaining guests, your floor should be in tiptop condition..
Refinishing your hardwood typically enhances the beauty of your floor and of course home. Moreover, hardwood floors generally attracts possible buyers. A newly-refinished floor will do the job even better. Undoubtedly, refinished hardwood flooring will have a significant influence on your home value during evaluation. People will always want to buy a home with high-quality features.
It Beautifies Your Home
When you hire professionals to refinish your floor, gritty surfaces, dents, and scratches disappear. The effect of this is that it gives an instant boost to the beauty of your home. Indeed, some customers report that their home floors seem virtually new again.
It Increases Safety
A defective hardwood floor can mess up the beauty of your whole sitting room. But, that’s not the worrying part. It can also be dangerous to the occupants of the house.
For example, a hardwood floor that is splintering may lead to a severe injury to someone’s foot. However, refinishing of deteriorated hardwood floors can fix future safety concerns before they occur.
Related article: Know-how On Refinishing Hardwood Floors
Refinishing Your Hardwood Floors: Process Overview
The process of refinishing hardwood floors often follows a logical sequence. Ultimately, this doesn’t have to do with whether you hire a professional contractor or you do it yourself. Here are four (4) significant parts of a hardwood refinishing project that requires an estimate:
Preparation
The preparation process involves getting your floor ready for refinishing. This includes cleaning the floor, repairing damaged areas, and ensuring the surface dry and dust-free. However, if the floor has deep stains, you’ll need to treat it separately before the refinishing process.
Furthermore, you may have to replace missing or broken boards to ensure the desired result. Most contractors may also remove baseboard footwear mouldings to ensure the sanding tools work correctly and to all edges. The mouldings are usually displaced after the sanding and finishing process.
Sanding
The sanding is the grinding procedure that removes any blemishes from a hardwood floor. Usually, this work is done using a walk-behind, upright power sander with a sanding screen or disc. A belt sander or edging sander usually takes care of the edgework.
The work often takes several paths with increasingly finer sandpaper. After the sanding process, you can then begin cleaning and vacuuming the floor. Also, note that conventional sanding may not be able to remove some deep gouges or scratches. But, your floor will certainly look better
Staining
After sanding your hardwood flooring, it will likely resemble fresh untreated wood. Depending on the wood species, some people tend to apply a surface finish directly over the bare wood. Or sometimes done before the surface, refinishing can take different stains or dyes to paint the wood.
Generally, regular hardwood floorings’ colouring materials are often made with water or oil-based wood paint. If you’re looking to refinish or replace your floor, you can check our hardwood floors in Canada.
Top-coating
The last step is to apply a durable, tough topcoat finish, usually water or oil-based polyurethane. Afterwards, a finishing pad or a roller and brush is used on the topcoat. This is usually fitted with two (2) or three (3) coatings.
What is the Cost of Refinishing Hardwood Floors?
Generally, the cost of refinishing hardwood floors is usually around $1,684. However, the cost can go as high as $2,500. Understandably, you’re probably wondering about the huge range in price. It is due to the several factors that affect your total costs.
Some of these factors include the labour cost and availability in your area. On a per-square-foot-analysis, average costs of refinishing hardwood floors can range from $3.52 to $5.00. However, these costs vary dynamically with the size of the area and the complexity of the work.
Notably, per-square-foot prices may be lower if your contractor will be refinishing the whole house. In contrast, the cost is more expensive when a contractor is refinishing only a single room.
Additionally, the costs of refinishing your home stairs average about $50 to $80 per stair tread. However, this high cost is because the refinish surfaces are small, requiring time-consuming detail work and a professional.
For general DIYers, the upright sander necessary for floor refinishing rents at around $60 to $70 per day. However, a full week rental is better, especially when you’re refinishing many floors. Also, upright sanders are readily available with orbital-action or belt-action heads.
In general, belt-action sanders are considered heavy-duty tools. Therefore, handling them can be difficult. Beginners must take care not to gouge the floor during the process.
Other than the sandpaper and sander, the highest extra DIY cost is the finish material. The average cost of polyurethane ranges from $40 to $85 per gallon. However, this is dependent on the product quality and the thickness of the finish.
Usually, one gallon of polyurethane is enough to use two (2) coats over a 300-square-foot space. Also, the polyurethane comes in both alkyd (oil)-based and water-based forms. Most professionals prefer oil-based products because of the result. However, some DIYers find water-based coatings easier to use.
Factors That Determine the Cost of Refinishing Hardwood Floors
Generally, it’ll take a contractor approximately four (4) to five (5) hours for refinishing hardwood floors. However, this is calculated per every 100 square feet of space. Several factors determine the overall cost of refinishing hardwood floors in Canada:
The Floor Size
Generally, smaller rooms are usually more expensive to refinish than bigger rooms. This is because the necessary equipment for sanding a hardwood floor is often considerably large. Therefore, It may not always be easy to maneuver or get it through small areas.
The Repairs
The repair cost of a damaged floor varies significantly depending on the extent of damages. If it’s damaged beyond control, refinishing the floor won’t be effective. In such cases, you’ll have to repair the cracks before refinishing.
The Final Cleanup
Hardwood floor refinishing can be messy sometimes. Unless the cleanup is stated explicitly in the contractor’s bid, you may have to consider hiring a cleaning service. This means you may need to include the cost of cleaning to the total expense before the project commences.
Other factors include:
- The contractor’s skill
- The costs of local labour
- Whether or not you’re removing the carpet or other floorings
- The cost of moving your home furniture
Conclusion
Typically, several factors determine the cost of refinishing hardwood floors. However, refinishing your floor is easier than replacing the whole floor. It’s less expensive and requires less time.
Also, refinishing your floor will increase your home value if you plan to sell it later. This is because beautiful refinished flooring is appealing to potential buyers and sets a higher value on your home.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective approach to modernize the old hardwood floors you love, refinishing is a great option. You can check out our online store for hardwood floors in Canada. If you want to learn more about hardwood floors, contact us today!
