Floor refinishing 101

So, as some of you know, we just recently purchased our first home. It had awesome old hardwood floors, and we knew when we purchased it that with a little elbow grease, them bad boys could really shine! So, we decided to have them refinished.

Then, we found out that it would cost between $3000-$4000 to have them professionally refinished. Now, the hubster is a super duper do it yourselfer, so he decided that he could do them. Of course, he's never done anything like that before, but hey, how hard could it really be? After a looong discussion and him explaining that it's really very simple; just sand, stain and poly and your done, I agreed to let him and my father in law do the floors. He assured me it would take 2 weeks, tops.

They started the week after Easter.

And just finished yesterday.

That's right folks, almost 2 months! Definitely not as quick as he made it sound at the beginning. However, there is only so much that you can do on the weekends and weeknights only. And only one to two people doing them, so I guess it wasn't that big a deal. We don't have a time limit to be in the new house, so why not take as long as it takes, right?

And I have to admit they look fabulous. I'm so proud of my hubster. He's a fantastic guy, and not a shabby floor refinisher either! Need proof?

When we bought our house. I loved the floors then. They weren't that bad...

In hindsight, I can see how bad they were originally. And the photos really don't do them justice. They looked worse in person. Lots of dark stains, cuts, scratches and blemishes. Not so hot.

Then, he sanded. I actually was able to help sand one day, but most of the time I had to be at home with Buggy so she didn't breathe in the sawdust.

I actually contemplated just putting a poly on the unstained wood, because I liked the bare feel. It was bright and light and airy. The hubster stained a closet with the stain we had chosen to see how we felt about it, and well, we loved it. So, he went with it, and stained and poly-ed. I have to admit, I am in love with our new floors.

We also didn't have transitions between the different floors in the house. Basically we have a tiled entryway, but there wasn't a threshold between the tile and wood. There was just an unfinished drop off edge to the tile. That definitely won't do with a little Buggy running around the house, so my father in law made us custom transitions. How pretty are these? Awesome, yes?

All in all, I'm super duper happy with our floors. It took For.EVAH. But, totally totally worth it. I'd love to hear what you think!

Editing to add that we only spent right around $700 for this project. So we saved AT LEAST $2300 by doing them ourselves.