I have a job I am supposed to start next week. The customer has a prefinish maple hardwood floor in their kitchen. I am adding into their living/dinning room. My customer does not like the natural look and is leaning towards a rosewood stain. I'd hate to put a prefinish maple floor in the living/dinning room and then sand it. It would be much easier to just put a unfinished maple hardwood in. Since the kitchen is prefinished it has the beveled look. What do you guys normally do in this situation? The new hardwood will not be tied into the old hardwood.
hardwood flooring question pre/unfinish
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I don't understand your question. If you're planning to stain the floor yourself, no, it makes no sense to install prefinished. Are you planning to refinish the floor that's already in the kitchen?
When they sand the prefinished floor, the bevels will still be there. If he puts in square edge unfinished in the other part of the house, it will not have the bevels.
Personally, I just explain to the client what they're gonna see when we finish & guage by their reaction how to proceed forward. I've yet to have a client that this bothered & if it did, I'd just explain to them that the alternative is to remove all the prefinished flooring & install unfinished throughout the entire project so it was a perfect match.
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Why would they want to install pre finished HW flooring, then sand it and stain it to a different tone..... .:blink: makes no sense.....IMO ....
One note,
If your sanding the kitchen floor....try to find out what brand it is and the finish that was applied. If it's an aluminum oxide finish it is very,very tough and not easy to sand- your going to be there for a while.
My personal opinion about staining floors.......I don't think it is a good idea. If , or I should say when the floor gets scratched it is going to be difficult to repair it/ blend it in without it being noticeable....
I strongly urge clients that want HW flooring to go with natural wood and species selection according to the tone they are looking for. If the floor gets scratched or damaged it is a lot easier to repair and blend in and in most cases looks like the rest of the floor.
I would talk to your customers about getting something with the tone and color they are looking floor. However if they won't budge then go with unfinished and then stain it, I'm just not a big fan of doing it this way...
JMPOV ,
B,
One note,
If your sanding the kitchen floor....try to find out what brand it is and the finish that was applied. If it's an aluminum oxide finish it is very,very tough and not easy to sand- your going to be there for a while.
My personal opinion about staining floors.......I don't think it is a good idea. If , or I should say when the floor gets scratched it is going to be difficult to repair it/ blend it in without it being noticeable....
I strongly urge clients that want HW flooring to go with natural wood and species selection according to the tone they are looking for. If the floor gets scratched or damaged it is a lot easier to repair and blend in and in most cases looks like the rest of the floor.
I would talk to your customers about getting something with the tone and color they are looking floor. However if they won't budge then go with unfinished and then stain it, I'm just not a big fan of doing it this way...
JMPOV ,
B,
It's really not that bad to remove aluminum oxide. Belive it or not, you start with a fine paper for aluminum oxide. We save all our worn 60 & 80 grit belts with some life left in them just for sanding prefinished floors. Using new belts gets us slightly more mileage than used belts, but not enough to matter.
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If you're talking about solid maple plank/strip: maybe I've been using the wrong brands, but in my experience solid wood isn't milled that carefully, in the expectation that it will be sanded after installation. I'd hate to bevel some flooring and then sand away the bevel in order to make the floor even to finish. Maybe one of the flooring gurus has more to say about it (might tell me to stop using crummy flooring).
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Ok I'll give this a shot because I have done this more than a few times.
The first rule is that an unfinished floor, when installed next to a prefinished floor will not match well. This is because of the beveled edge. You can explain it to the customer, but until they see it, they won't realize the difference.
Also, in my experience, sanding the bevel edge off is not as easy as it sounds. One room, not too bad, but 500 feet or more it is alot of grinding.
So for me, this job could go several ways, depending on the expectations and the budget, as well as the size of the areas, which was not mentioned.
If you want to match the prefinished kitchen, you need to install the same material in the other rooms, sand it all and stain it all. Then it will all be beveled.
If the customer doesn't mind the difference, install unfinished and then sand the whole thing.
I despise beveled edges, so if money were no object, I would pull out the kitchen and install a different wood, as staining large maple floors for some reason is tricky for me.
The first rule is that an unfinished floor, when installed next to a prefinished floor will not match well. This is because of the beveled edge. You can explain it to the customer, but until they see it, they won't realize the difference.
Also, in my experience, sanding the bevel edge off is not as easy as it sounds. One room, not too bad, but 500 feet or more it is alot of grinding.
So for me, this job could go several ways, depending on the expectations and the budget, as well as the size of the areas, which was not mentioned.
If you want to match the prefinished kitchen, you need to install the same material in the other rooms, sand it all and stain it all. Then it will all be beveled.
If the customer doesn't mind the difference, install unfinished and then sand the whole thing.
I despise beveled edges, so if money were no object, I would pull out the kitchen and install a different wood, as staining large maple floors for some reason is tricky for me.
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Bob, a good flooring supplier can give you a heads up on brands that are milled correctly. I normally refuse to install box store unfinished as culling/sorting then sanding the junk just takes too long. Many flooring salespeople have almost zero training it seems.
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Thanks. I tell customers who want box store flooring that the big box business model accommodates a warranty failure rate that's way higher (10%, 15% or so?) than what I can tolerate (0% or so). I just know that after I've installed new unfinished solid wood flooring, it needs to be sanded, not just to accept a finish but because it's not all flush either. It's very possibly my installation at fault :jester:
I will talk to the guys at the flooring supplier the next time about differences. Maybe we can do a little less sanding. I appreciate the advice.
- Bob
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I hope that didn't come across funny. I just meant that when I call my wood supplier he knows what I want and will steer me the right way. I install it myself, as you do, so I want good material. My sanding partner of 15 years appreciates it too.
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Not at all, just good advice.
I'm a little prickly about flooring right now because I dropped the wood flooring via change order from a remodel a couple weeks ago, because the customer didn't want to pay my perfectly fair price. They had their choice of flooring contractor do it; they finished yesterday and it's not very good. The customer's savings is going to get used up paying me via change order to fix things, pick up dropped balls, etc. The customer ends up with a lower-quality end result, slower, for the same price or more, and they're mad at me because I'm charging them for the cleanup. It's not satisfying, and it's making me grumpy.
Bob
Edit: It's a glued-down engineered, pre-finished, maple, and there are waffle-face hammer marks skittered all over the floor. The first thing I said to my tile man Mario this morning when we went back into the place was that I didn't remember that it was a distressed look. Holy cow, it wasn't. The customer hasn't seen it yet. Completely not in my scope.
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I see it happen all the time. The flooring business is full of poorly trained workers, and because they're paid by the foot, it's hurry hurry hurry, quality be damned.
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In my area, 10 years ago I would say staining accounted for about 10% of the floors i was putting in. Today it is probably 50. Lots of dark floors. They will show a deep scratch, but a floor can be touched up. I can get some pretty good results sometimes with just a set of sharpies. I save chunks from cabinet touch up kits, and have used melted crayons before too.
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:thumbsup:
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It's just my perspective about "real" HW floors,.....please don't take it personally.....
B,
B,
I also prefer unstained floors as well, for many of the reasons you do. But unfortunately, not all of my clients can be convinced & I have to occasionally stain a floor. The 2 jobs I'm starting this week will both be stained.It's just my perspective about "real" HW floors,.....please don't take it personally.....
B,
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This is a job I did last year. Cabinet install and about 1400' Select Red oak 3 1/4", stained Minwax English Chestnut, 3 coats Lenmar oil. 14 flush vents. I think the only other floor that would look better here would be an american cherry, natural.
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