Refinishing or replacing your floor What should I know before making decision?

Over time, your floors take a lot of abuse. They can become stained, chipped or just ugly to look at. In this case, let’s examine hardwood floors and find out if you should refinish or replace your hardwood floor completely.

Cost

Let’s look at the first obvious thing before you start your project: Cost.

It seems logical that if you’re refinishing your hardwood floor, it will cost you a lot less. Replacing your hardwood floor will require not only a flooring contractor but money for his time and material. You may feel that by getting multiple estimates from different local flooring Contractors, you may actually end up saving money. You can always cut corners by installing the floor yourself, but that will require you to have knowledge and extreme precision. In terms of cost, we can say that refinishing your hardwood floor is the winner.

What are you looking to accomplish?

Is it your goal to just shine your hardwood floor? Clean it up a bit? Restore it to its original look? Or are you simply looking to change the floor to a different type of hardwood floor? Or completely change the direction of the flooring itself?

Whatever your goal is, if you’re simply thinking about shining or cleaning, then there’s no need to replace your hardwood floor. It may be that it does not even need to be taken away. It may be that hiring a flooring contractor or a handyman can help you accomplish the simple goal of restoring your floor.

Timing

Here’s where things get interesting. Refinishing a hardwood floor, depending on the square footage of your home, can be a very lengthy process. Let’s not forget the mess that you’re creating. The worse part about is that the areas of the floor that are being refinished have to remain untouched for a few days, which means you can’t walk on a refinished hardwood floor.

Now, replacing your hardwood floor completely can simply take from a couple of hours to an entire day to finish. So if you’re in a Hurry and you have the money to spend, go right ahead with replacing the floor because the time it takes to refinish is just not going to cut it.

The Takeaway

While both options “refinishing or replacing” have their pros and cons, it all comes down to what you feel comfortable with and what you’re looking to accomplish. If you are the homeowner that just wants something new and wants to change the direction of the floor, then reaching out to a local floor contractor to get multiple free estimates may be best for you. But if you’re simply wanting to bring your hardwood floor back to it’s original glory and save money, then refinishing is the way to go.