Ann Arbor Wood Flooring: Hardwood Floor Installation, Refinishing & Repair

Solid hardwood is one piece of wood top to bottom, usually 3/4 inch thick, with tongue-and-groove edges blind-nailed through the tongue into a plywood or OSB subfloor. It goes on or above grade, never in a basement. Before any boards go down, a good installer checks moisture in both the flooring and the subfloor with a meter. The NWFA says the gap between them should be no more than 4 percent for strip under 3 inches wide and 2 percent for anything wider. Unfinished boards are sanded and finished in place, so the seams disappear. Prefinished boards arrive coated and go faster, with small bevels at the edges. Swapping carpet for hardwood counts too: carpet removal runs $0.70 to $1.60 a square foot nationally.

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Engineered hardwood is a cross-layered plywood core with a real wood veneer on top. It moves less than solid wood when the humidity changes, so it's the usual choice over concrete slabs, in basements and over radiant heat. It can be glued to the slab, floated on underlayment or stapled to a wood subfloor. The thing to ask about is wear-layer thickness. For an engineered floor to count as refinishable, the NWFA's program sets a minimum of 3.2 mm for unfinished boards and 2.5 mm for factory-finished ones. A thin veneer may never take a single sanding.

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The NWFA calls anything 3 inches or wider a plank, and wide plank goes well past that. Each board swells and shrinks across its face, so a wide plank shows seasonal gaps and cupping more than narrow strip does. That's why the 2 percent moisture limit above applies to them. Installers often add a glue assist or face-nail the ends on very wide boards, and leave about 3/4 inch of expansion space at the walls. Reclaimed boards need to be kiln-dried, de-nailed and milled flat before they go down.

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Herringbone uses rectangular blocks meeting at right angles. Chevron cuts the ends at an angle so the points line up in a single zigzag. Both start from a centerline snapped down the room, so the pattern looks straight from the doorway. Parquet covers block and geometric patterns more generally. All that cutting adds waste and labor: HomeGuide puts true parquet and herringbone at $13 to $40 a square foot installed. Older parquet tiles that have come loose can often be lifted, cleaned and glued back rather than replaced.

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A full refinish sands through the old finish to bare wood with a drum or belt sander, an edger along the walls and a buffer to blend the two. Each pass uses a finer grit than the last. The floor is vacuumed, stained if you want color, then coated two or three times. HomeGuide says solid floors can be refinished four to ten times, and engineered floors one to three, depending on the wear layer. The NWFA says the number depends on the contractor's skill and equipment as much as on the wood, which is a good reason to ask who's running the sander.

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Color only changes when the floor is sanded to raw wood, so a lighter look means a full sand. Ask for sample patches brushed onto your own floor, not a chip in a showroom, and look at them in daylight and lamplight. Oak takes stain evenly. Maple tends to blotch, and The Wood Database notes it may need a pre-conditioner, gel stain or toner. Some installers wet the grain first (a water pop) so a darker stain soaks in more evenly. Sheen is the last choice: matte and satin hide dust and scratches better than semi-gloss.

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A screen and recoat is refinishing without sanding to bare wood. The installer cleans the floor, scuffs the existing finish with a buffer and abrasive screen, then rolls on a fresh topcoat. It fixes dullness and light scuffs, and nationally it costs $2 to $5 a square foot. It can't fix wear that has reached the wood. A quick test: wipe a worn spot with a damp cloth. If it looks fine while wet, a recoat will likely do. Urethane won't stick over wax, and some factory aluminum-oxide finishes are hard to bond to.

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Most repairs come down to a few boards. Deep gouges, black pet stains in oak, a split plank or a burn get cut out, and new boards are woven in so the joints stagger like the rest of the floor. The trick is matching species, width and thickness, and with old floors that sometimes means pulling boards from a closet. Where a wall has come out, the installer laces new boards into the gap instead of leaving a patch line. HomeGuide puts board replacement at $5 to $20 a square foot.

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Water shows up as cupping (board edges higher than the middle), crowning (the middle higher) or buckling, where boards lift off the subfloor. The fix starts with the leak, then fans and dehumidifiers, then moisture readings until the wood settles back. Hardwood Floors Magazine explains that sanding a cupped floor flat while it's still wet underneath leaves it crowned later, once the wood dries. Boards that have split or come apart get replaced. For an insurance claim, ask the contractor for dated photos and written moisture readings.

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Stairs are often the last piece of carpet left in the house. Pulling it sometimes reveals usable oak treads. More often there's construction-grade lumber underneath, and new treads, risers and nosing go over or in place of it. Treads should match the floor's species and stain so the two read as one. Refinishing existing stairs is mostly hand work, since a drum sander doesn't fit, and HomeGuide's national range is $25 to $85 per step.

See Hardwood Stairs in Ann Arbor, MI and Staircase Refinishing in Ann Arbor, MI.

A wood floor can only be as flat as what's under it. The NWFA standard is within 3/16 inch over 10 feet (or 1/8 inch over 6 feet) for glue-down floors, and 1/4 inch over 10 feet when nailing. High spots get sanded or planed, low spots filled, and slabs get a leveling compound. Most squeaks come from a subfloor that has pulled away from the joists. Screwing it back down, adding blocking or sistering a weak joist usually quiets it.

See Subfloor Repair in Ann Arbor, MI.