Persistent Pursuit of Perfection​​​​​​ Since 2000 

 Hardwood Floor Installation

 Stairs and Treads

 Sanding and Refinishing

 Exotic Wood

 Restoration of Old Flooring

 Wood Floor vs Carpeting

 Staining

 Floor Repair

The #1 question we receive is about refinishing hardwood floors. I hope this helps answer your questions.
 

The two biggest challenges when refinishing  New Jersey Hardwood Flooring are where do you put the furniture and choosing a color.
 

If the house is empty, great but most of the time that’s not the case. Any area of hardwood flooring you wish to have refinished must be clear.
 

I’m no help at choosing the color. I’ve been refinishing Hardwood Flooring in New Jersey since 2000 and I’ve done every color you can think of and at the end of the day, I like them all. You can look at pictures online and you can see stain samples at Home Depot but when refinishing your hardwood floors, you need to have the sample colors applied on your floor and with at least one coat of clear finish.
 

Now to the real work. 
 

Once the hardwood floor is clean and clear, no furniture, and all the carpet, pad, tack-strip, staples, and nails have been removed we can get started.
 

We still hang plastic. Our machines all have vacuums and are the best in the industry and other companies will tell you its “dust-free” but that’s not true. To us old guys it seems like it's dust-free because before the vacuum systems the house would be covered in dust. Now we are able to collect about 80% - 90% of the dust. But when you are refinishing Hardwood Flooring in New Jersey you will have dust.
 

We sand the floor with 7 or 8 grades of different sandpaper. It sounds like a lot but we are sanding off the wood a paper-layer at a time. You don’t want to sand off more wood flooring than you have to but you must sand out all of the imperfections.
 

We sand the hardwood floor so that it is tabletop smooth, we then apply 4 coats of clear polyurethane. We do a light sanding in between each coat of finish.
 

If you prefer to have the floor stained (any color) once we have the hardwood floor tabletop smooth, we then wash the floor with denatured alcohol mixed with water. That opens the grain of the hardwood floor so that the stain can penetrate and gives the floor a deep rich even color. We let that dry, we then stain the hardwood floor. We stain the floor in the direction of the grain. We stain about a 2-foot section at a time working from one side of the room to the other. We let the stain sit for a minute or two before wiping it off. We buff the stain into the wood with a high-speed buffer once the stain has dried we then start applying the 4 coats of clear polyurethane.   ​​​​​​