[SustainableTompkins] Advice on refinishing pine floors

[Simon St.Laurent]

> A friend has purchased a 100-year-old home downtown and discovered,
> under a few layers of carpeting and tile, the original tongue-and-groove
> pine or fir planking, which was painted. She would like advice on
> whether it is possible for her and her husband to refinish these floors
> DIY, or whether they should hire professional help. They want to
> preserve the original floors as well as they can.

I had something similar in my 80-year-old house, when I bought it in 
1999.  There was 3" fir flooring throughout the house, laid diagonally 
on the first floor and horizontally on the second.  It was a single 
layer, though, meant as subflooring and not the final floor.

In my house, they'd just finished it and never bothered with a real 
floor - perhaps what happens when a house is built in 1929 on what might 
have been speculation.  Newly subdivided real estate on the edge of a 
quiet rural highway leading straight to Cornell, with a Model-T size 
garage door.  (Even a Miata turns out to be a tight fit in this garage.)

Mine had just been finished, never painted, so there wasn't a risk of 
lead.  We sanded it, though it was pretty badly worn.  Then we finished 
it with stain and lots of oil-based polyurethane.

In some parts of the house, that's still the flooring, but I'm less and 
less pleased with it.  The livingroom was the first to get hardwood 
flooring put over it, as it was the most worn, and had a trampoline 
section.  I just finished putting maple into another room upstairs - a 
job I don't really recommend doing yourself, now that I've done it.  Now 
that I've started, though, I'm planning on putting the prefinished 
hardwood plank flooring almost everywhere.

In hard wear areas, the subfloor is turning into splinters central, and 
it's not precisely level either. Some areas are kind of hollowed out - 
partly by wear, partly by my trying to get a sander in there to 
refinish.  Filling gaps in a floor with the epoxy stuff works, but looks 
pretty awful.

It's clear that the house was meant to be this way, though, as I have a 
large problem to solve with my already steep stairs, too, as they're set 
to connect to the subfloor, not a 3/4" layer above that.  Doors were 
also trimmed to match the floors.

Tom suggests painting over; I'd suggest putting another layer of 
hardwood flooring over it.  That should permanently remove the 
temptation to play with lead paint, if it is lead paint.  It is, 
unfortunately, a lot more expensive.

As a short-term solution, finishing a softwood subfloor can work - the 
one in my house has lasted around 70 years, after all.  But the paint... 
well, that's a problem.

Thanks,
Simon St.Laurent
http://livingindryden.org/