apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Bruno, I am renovating an old house and a had a floor refinisher make a quote of $1000 for a small kitchen. He said the old mastic would gum up the machine and the price included having the machine cleaned. I have scraped it away myself by softening it with Murphy Oil Soap. It looked almost as bad as your picture and the oil soap, a little water and scraping with the edge of a cement trowel has made it quite nice. With the soap and gunk method there is no dust to breathe.

get some runners

Having done it, sanding is only quick if the flooring is near perfect. If there are holes in your hardwood floorboards, grooves or any other surface imperfections it will take longer. If you like working with wood, doing the refinishing should be a lot of fun (when it's done and pristine) and you can really take pride in your hard work. If woodworking is not your kind of thing, pay someone else to do the refinishing. Wood floors are very sturdy, but they *can* get damaged. A good pro knows this and will check.

Using a stain to get the look you want is pretty easy, and should not cost multiple arms and legs. You can also do interesting design details with stains.

If you've got reason to believe the hardwood is intact over the whole apartment, you may want to fix all the flooring at once. Big upheaval in the short term, but then the floors will be *done*. Doing floors a room at a time is a huge pain, and the joins between different layers always look awkward and collect dirt. In really badly done joins, they even can degenerate into a tripping hazard. Not fun.

if you get a contractor, check in every day.

make certain you get at least 3 coats of smooth poly, no grit from settled dust, etc.

i had a contractor do my floors; moved all of my furniture back into my apartment after he had done only one gritty coat of poly. i chased him down, made him come back and re-apply 3 more coats, and made certain he was there when i did the final inspection of the 4 coats before he moved any furniture back in. live and learn.

i feel your pain. we refinished the floors throughout our house after removing teal carpeting that the previous owners loved so much they glued it directly to the floor.
we used adhesive remover and after a lot of scraping and a few chemical burns we sanded, stained, and gave them a few coats of poly. it was a lot easier than i expected and the sander had a bag to collect the dust. the dust cleanup was pretty minimal. we were able to do the whole house for the price we were quoted for one room.

I owned two victorian era houses in MA when I was too broke to pay for help. I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the floors with steel wool and strong soap powder (and water) I bought at the hardware store (the brand name of the soap escapes me). I wiped the floors dry with a towel as I proceeded. When the floor was dry I put a few coats of water based polyurethane on them.
This is cheap, looks good and is reversable. Good luck.

If you decide to just do a touchup of the floors as Andrea suggests, test what the finish is first to save yourself a lot of trouble (was, urethane, shellak or varnish). I've renewed a scarred wax finish with extrafine steel wool, a turpentine/paste wax mixtu re, and a lot of elbow grease. Voila! it was fabulous.

The flip side of this was the apartment I was in where the cheapo landlord put poly over something oil based.. it flaked up everywhere!

Agree with all of the above. But I hope you're using a facemask. There may be asbestos in the old flooring. Or, at a minimum, lots of dust.

i am dealing with a similar situation in my new house, and am thinking of staining the floors black- I love that sleek look. Has anyone out there tried this, and were you happy with the results? Am a bit worried about the dirt showing...

I went through the same thing in my house, circa 1914. What I uncovered was the original pine flooring. I rented a sander for the weekend and did it myself, not to hard, but I was going for a distressed look so I left nails in and didnt go past a 120 grit sandpaper. I wanted the floor to show its 94 years. Point of this is that there are other options for finishing. I went with a polymerized tung oil from Sunderland Welles, http://www.sutherlandwelles.com They were super helpful with what to use etc etc. Only problem is that it has to be recoated about once a year but it has a beautiful glow instead of a plasticky sheen

Jazz, I want my floor to look nice and in character with a modest house from the 30's, not a plasticky sheen. Sutherlandwelles rang a distant bell. One of my first jobs was polishing heart pine with Frank's tung oil products. I wondered what became of him. Thanks for that link.

Thanks, all! I'm really grateful for all the tips!

It's a 1901 limestone brick townhouse fixer-upper in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn; I'm living there, so that's another consideration.

I'll update as I make progress!

ps. I like satin finish floor they look more natural. they are protected but no sheen!!!