Restoring Oak Floors - Just how do you make your floor beautiful again ?
a. Sand, stain, and apply three coats of oil based polyurethane - This is a standard procedure to a floor refinish job. Though it may not give the same richness of color as other methods, it may be much less expensive and faster.
b. Sand, apply a chemical for change of color, a coat of hard sealer to "seal" the colour, followed by a multi-layering process in which several coats of other chemicals are applied.
This may be more expensive but the final finish obtained may be far better than the first method.
Different people might give different methods for color formulation, but most possibly they all work. But there's more you might want to know about this process if you are considering restoring old oak floors that are several decades old ...
Old oak floors may not give finish as good as the samples look ...
Now, if you have requested quotes from several companies for restoring old oak floors, you may have received samples from them. All of these samples seem to have an amazingly good and impressive finish ...
But these are most possibly made of newer oak and not 50 or 100 year old oaks !
Older oaks may not give the same finish as those made from newer woods.
Restoring old oak floors - questions to ask
You might want to ask a few questions about the refinishing process being used on your oak floor. A couple of them may be
a. Are the chemicals being used in the process harmful, especially if there are children around the house.
Though the chemicals being used in the restoration process are most possibly harmless, you might still want to be certain that they are harmless.
b. If glaze finishes are being used in high usage areas, would the multiple layers be worn out ?
If the glaze coats are not "buried" sufficiently deep in the finish, then thee might be a possibility that the layers of colour could get worn out, especially in high usage areas.
A lot may depend on skill and experience of the people doing the restoration of oak floors, and as it was mentioned earlier some people feel restoring oak floors is more an art than an exact science.