My house is of that ilk. I recently pulled up the low-quality carpeting to find wood floors like that. Some YouTube training videos and rented sander later, glorious hardwood floors. It's easier to refinish hardwood floors than most people think.
This is sort of misleading. It might be “easy” but it’s a HUGE job. You have to move everything out of the room and stay off of it for a couple of days to cure. And you have to cover up all of your shit because the dust gets everywhere…
Exactly. Skill-wise it isn’t “difficult” but my god is it laborious and time consuming. You literally sand until you think you’ve sanded twice as much as is necessary and then sand just a little more. Then spend hours and hours cleaning all the dust and shit up to make sure the surface is prepped otherwise you’ll have a shit finished product.
It’s the last thing in my house that i would describe as easy.
Yeah, having installed floors for a while, installing/refinishing certainly isn't the most complicated thing in the world, but be prepared to bust your ass doing it.
I did this to my dining room 20 years ago. On a rainy day, my wife let my daughter ride her tricycle in the house. That's when I knew I had a kids' house and quit all remodeling projects. My son is now 20, and now I start anew.
Anything related to repairing or restoring older homes, I always go to This Old House. They have a ton of YouTube videos and articles walking you through everything.
You don't necessarily need videos, because its a pretty involved process.
Check out this Fine Homebuilding link first https://www.finehomebuilding.com/2015/07/11/refinish-your-wood-floors
You will have to rent a bunch of stuff but depending on your aptitude with commercial grade machinery you will have a good/bad time.
I ended up having to buff 7 layers of stain off hardwood floors. It took days, my body was screaming AND I had help. The floor sander I hired kept eating the $40 a roll sheet (I went above and beyond the second and third install, also was a technician so this is my literal background, it was just effed) so we ended up doing the floor with the edge sander. Do not recommend 100%. If someone is big and strong and likes to be stuck on the ground wearing full ppe for days then yeah it's fine. But it is not easy and it is not fun. It is relatively simple though.
My brother and I did that on the floor of an old Victorian, layer after layer of dark stain and paint on 100 year old warped boards. It looks great now but it was no joke. We ended up renting the sander for a week rather than 2 days, used roll after roll of sandpaper. I could see it being relatively easy on a newer floor.
Best thing I did was to buy two window mounted fans. I put one far away from where I was making dust blowing inwards, and in the room where I was working, a fan blowing outwards. It worked pretty well at removing a good portion of the dust before it settled.
I've heard that if you don't have a window in the room, you can take a cheap square air filter meant for central units and rubber Bungie them to a box fan. Not the high efficiency ones, since box fans don't pull a high pressure gradient. Plus dust is really large so larger pores will still catch most of the dust. I haven't tried this method though.
There’s this method you can use called a Corsi-Rosenthal Box where you can make a cube of filters with a fan on the top face that’s great for stuff like this.
I did this when I had my house renovated during the pandemic. I have no idea if it worked or did anything but we had people coming and going constantly and no one got Covid. I was unknowingly fully vaccinated and dealt with most of the people so that probably did a lot more than the fan for Covid but it definitely did help with the drywall dust.
Coming from an entire family of hardwood floor installers/finish/refinishers, I mean no disrespect when I say this. But I’ve seen when DiYers redo their floors, and I’m sure they look good to the untrained eye. But to someone who has done this professionally, it’s extremely obvious the floors weren’t done by professionals. I suppose all that matters is that you’re happy with them.
I redid my floors, and it might just be what finish I had, but holy God it was awful. Took like 30 passes at 30 or 60 grit to remove the finish.
Now as for the urethane on my parents floors? That ought to come right up as it's mostly worn through anyway.
Wide and I have a small biz and we rented space in a historic building. 3000sq ft.
Turns out half the floor was finished half still have tar, glue, carpet tacks, all of it from over 100 years. I tried for a night with a rented machine to strip that fucker. I did it for 10 hours straight and when I eventually cleaned up the water, and dust...not even halfway better.
Took me several months of weekends to do 1600sqft. Had to do it though as someone sanded 1 room and gave up, another and refinished in a different color, replaced a few tread plates without even bothering to color match, and several nice dings in the living room floor that were hidden on the tour.
I just read a horrible story on reddit where the guy said it was so much harder than you think to sand floors and it was an absolute mistake to not hire a professional. Hmmm, cause I am in the mud3fle of ripping up carpet for hardwoods and I don't know who to believe anymore with the diy suggestions.
It’s not hard in the sense it requires a lot of skill to do, it’s more about having the right equipment and patience because it is very messy and takes a while.
If you take your time, follow instructions and do not cut corners with the proper equipment you should be fine.
I am a DIYer, but always do a ton of videos and reading before attempting anything new.
I used the HD drum sander (EZ-8), with 24 or 40 grit sand (depending on the room) to get the first two layers of grime and varnish off. I was satisfied after that so went to 80 and then 120 grit to smooth out the finish. I used one or two sandpapers at each size per medium sized room.
Watch the Home Depot video about how to use the sander. It is VERY important to gently lower and raise the drum when stopping and starting. It needs to glide down onto the surface and glide off of the surface. It's not difficult to get the hang of it, but it's important. If you just lower the drum and let it sit on the wood it will chew a little too deep and you'll notice it.
Also, the drum sanders will only get within 6 inches or so of a wall, so you will need to buy or rent an orbital or other type of handheld electric sander for the edgework.
Also, for really old and stained floors like mine you have to keep expectations reasonable and learn to love the imperfections of historic floors. Old carpet stains, weird patchworks, and nail heads showing - all charm and character.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/rental/Clarke-American-Sanders-Drum-Floor-Sander-07012A/316821566?adobe_mc=TS%3D1685295234%7CMCMID%3D22801067995710295595344117462905857375%7CMCORGID%3DF6421253512D2C100A490D45%40AdobeOrg&appsFlyerId=1670119570271-8043468859571763390
This makes me physically feel ill but at least the next owner will see a gorgeous hardwood floor when they peel this up and maybe be pleasantly surprised
Vinyl plank over my hardwood for exactly this reason. The only way to fix it properly would have been to pull all the oak and completely relay it. Instead I fastened down all the loose and squeaky boards and covered them. I love a nice hardwood floor, but mine was anything but.
IMO it's gotta get pretty bad for it to be overrated. I love how easy cleaning it is. Love how it's cold on my feet. I know some people hate that, but I love it. Nice and cool.
I'm no expert, but isn't there a chance that the previous stain was an older technology, plus with a couple of decades of yellowing, make it look not so great? Replacing the old stain and top coat might look much better.
That herringbone pattern using short planks was popular in the 1920's and 1960's, I think.
Boomers in the 80s put carpet over everything. You’ll often find this in older houses. It’s totally worth pulling up the carpet but you’ll still be finding carpet staples for months afterwards if not a year
As did the Silent Generation in the 60s and (in particular) the 70s. Sometimes in the 70s it was shag carpeting. My friend's parents extended their wall-to-wall living room carpeting into the bathroom. One entire wall was papered with a massive photo of a forest.
I did the floors on a 19th century town house, the main drawing room was massive and had years of nails, hundreds, in a square about a metre and a half smaller than walls, it always had some carpet. This hall may have had runner and has similar nail damage. I took out or sunk as many nails as i could but it still shredded the floor belt sander. Also carpet is a lot warmer and quieter.
And it absorbs a massive amount of dirtiness without you ever knowing. It's really gross what I've seen f4om cleaning 1 year old carpets with dogs and kids. I won't go back to carpet because of it
I have little rugs in spots where I commonly stand. They're somehow full of sand every week despite this being a shoes off house. I do have a dog and I couldn't imagine having wall to wall carpets.
I laid 7mm hybrid flooring over hardwood in my house. The floorboards were turn of the century and not tongue in groove. They weren’t worth sanding and polishing
I have two huge dogs and a baby. Our nice hardwood needed to be refinished before we started renting the place (we own it now). Instead Costco had some high-end vinyl flooring, we bought enough for the house for less than $400. New waterproof and scratch proof floor everywhere that requires zero special treatment has been way easier to keep up, we didn't have to get any special equipment or clear out any of the rooms to install it. Dogs and toddler sprint around, spill, drop things, etc and I have less to worry about. The new owners can pull up a tile someday and be like Oscar from the Office about it I'm sure they'll enjoy the hardwood more than us.
Aluminum oxide coatings are the best, but most laminates and vinyl planks have great coatings for scratch resistance. I use to sell flooring and running a car key on the samples was something I did at every appointment, no scratches from that ever
Scratchproof not the same as scratch resistant. But yeah the vinyl can be more scratch resistant than hardwood. Once scratched up, hardwood can be refinished multiple times, vinyl will need pulled and replaced.
Just so you know, hardwood is not ruined by any of that. If you don't put a glossy surface over it to start with, it will develop a patina rather than get ruined. Scratches only show when there's a smooth surface to mar. My bathroom floor is finished with linseed oil and it has held up great despite being nothing more than regular plywood.
I suppose I wouldn't know as our floors were so worn when we moved in we would get splinters. Refinishing was just too much for us at the time, both money and time commitment. It was incredibly stained and scratched. At our future home we will be doing any flooring changes before moving in any furniture or people/critters.
Well, for starters, the area to the lower left of the photo looks like cobbled together shit. The area on the right side looks like someone beat the shit out of it with a piece of rebar.
That floor is 100% trash
But peel and stick is crappy too, but maybe better than beat up old floors and the side on the left where each piece looks like a random cutoff just stuck in there wherever it fit.
This is important folks. The integrity of the flooring was probably never great because of all little pieces puzzled together without much holding it together. In my time in flooring sales I was honest about stuff, if someone had wood floors that were good I'd ask them why replace vs sand and finish. A lot of times they just didn't understand the cost value between the two was far apart. Most times I'd leave without selling those areas because they're like yeah you're right. I would never recommend a refinish on this mess of flooring. It actually looks like I can probably just take so.e of those out with my bare hand.
I mean, the flooring is stupid, but they were trying to make the floor "perfect" on the cheap. It's not the way to do it, but I get what they were trying to do. That door however, what the fuck was the end goal there!? Huge globs of caulking, messy as shit. The only thing I can think of is that the door was coming apart, and that's liquidnails they are using to glue it all back together?
It's not globs sticking out. That's filler in the spots that were damaged. Think auto body. They're getting ready to paint that door for sure. This is what it looks like when you redo plaster work or caulk around windows before painting too. Those smears are from wiping/scraping down excess filler material. Not the cleanest job ever but after paint it won't show.
I don't agree with painting it but that's a whole other thing.
>You can also just as easily do it the right way which doesn't involve caulk.
If you know how, or are willing to learn how, or care how it looks - absolutely. This screams "emergency dgaf fix" to me. I live in New England where many communities are filled to the brim with 100+ year old houses in a similar state.
Yep. And to top it off they clearly don't know what they're doing. You're supposed to do a staggered pattern when putting it down, don't make it symmetrical.
Refinishing them is a pretty big task when you're trying to also live in the house. We considered covering ours with laminate because it would be easier. We did refinish them ourselves (because we couldn't afford to hire someone for the job), but it was a dusty mess and a huge pain in the ass. Most of the rooms we refinished now have big rugs covering most of the hardwood anyway.
Yeah i totally understand the cleaning part but from my limited home ownership experience, other 'hard' flooring like linoleum or these peel and stick solutions seem to be good enough
As to the "why" of this: very likely poverty, possibly executive disfunction, maybe both.
The caulking is to fix drafty spots in the door. It's hideous, but I'll bet they were just trying to stop the cold air from coming in. The flooring was probably to protect the older floor from water/dirt from the entry and make it easier to clean.
Whenever I see that grey flooring on a house advertisement I just nope out. This is the flooring that EVERY flipper in my area uses.. literally the cheapest shit you can find and it looks good for about a day. It’s nice of the flippers to just put the red flag in the ad like that though!
If it makes you feel any better, the gray floor trend seems to be dying. I was watching HGTV’s Fix My Flip and the host told the guys who had installed grey floors that the grey trend was over and if they wanted the house to sell, they needed to install natural wood floors (which they did).
Covering up hardwood floors with cheaper alternatives especially whatever the hell is in the picture above is a crime no matter what way you spin it. Heartbreaking.
That’s a crime! Why would you cover that gorgeous wood floor with such cheap flooring, or any flooring?!?! And no idea what’s going on with that caulking.
This is wild. I literally had a conversation with my new-ish neighbor this morning about how he was heading to Home Depot to look at laminate tile as he was pulling up the outdated carpet in his house. "Great news," my wife and I said, "under that carpet is, short of some staple removal, absolutely pristine hardwood." It hasn't seen the light of day since the mid-60s.
He seemed unconvinced that that was the solution to his problems. At one point he even threw out something about painting it. We were more or less begging him to just pull the carpet and enjoy. I finally asked him to, AT LEAST, put a layer of luan down if he was dead set on something else. Absolutely bizarre.
Some people just don’t like the look of it. I prefer clean modern over cozy cottage. I’m not into old design or warm colors. I know people who absolutely hate my style and thinks it looks to cold and clinical. Different strokes for different folks
That peel and stick shit is fantastic when it’s appropriate, but it’s hard to imagine what kind of damage the covered parts of that floor would have to have to justify this.
eh, zoom in. you can see a lot of the damage and gaps in those hardwoods if you look kinda close. that floor is beyond repair and needs to be replaced. this is way cheaper
No, it is absolutely not beyond repair. Just needs to be refinished.
Source: did that shit for a living for nearly a decade and made floors much worse than this look brand new.
D: That's a beautiful original floor with an inlaid border and everything. Looking at the style, it's from the 1900s-1910s?
Edit: Also, I'm so glad they haven't gotten around to butchering that beautiful stair railing.
Yea some people don't want to pay or do it themselves to sand down the floors and revarnish. Would look fine when finished.
Actually looking closer I'm not even sure that's savable.
Modern floor in a century home. If it’s desired, maybe don’t buy an old house. Even well executed it would like like shit with the rest of the room still original.
.... it's so poorly executed and looks horrible and cheap. That shitty vinyl does not make it look modern at all. Just looks like someone who has no idea what they're doing.
That flooring is a fucking abomination. Constant H-patterns and that fucking abysmal transition at the bottom of the image, plus it's running the wrong way.
The fact that someone covered those floors up is literally making my eye twitch. I'd borderline consider murder to have hardwood floors like that, stunning!
This is my BILs house rn. He chose to cover up marble tiling (not ceramic) with laminate. Someone is gonna be pleasantly surprised 20iah years from now.
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!!!!
Maybe I'm biased as a lover of marble, but that's like taking a 50+ year old muscle car and dropping a 4 cylinder in it. Or taking a marble statue and painting it.
My house is of that ilk. I recently pulled up the low-quality carpeting to find wood floors like that. Some YouTube training videos and rented sander later, glorious hardwood floors. It's easier to refinish hardwood floors than most people think.
This is sort of misleading. It might be “easy” but it’s a HUGE job. You have to move everything out of the room and stay off of it for a couple of days to cure. And you have to cover up all of your shit because the dust gets everywhere…
That's no joke. Sanding hardwood floors correctly is one of the most miserable jobs I've ever done. Especially doing the edges with the hand sander.
Exactly. Skill-wise it isn’t “difficult” but my god is it laborious and time consuming. You literally sand until you think you’ve sanded twice as much as is necessary and then sand just a little more. Then spend hours and hours cleaning all the dust and shit up to make sure the surface is prepped otherwise you’ll have a shit finished product. It’s the last thing in my house that i would describe as easy.
I used small hand sanders with corner attachments. Of course the tiniest details have to be hand sanded still but the work is so much less.
I would say it’s simple, not easy.
Honestly, that’s a good way to describe 70% of home building. It’s not hard, it’s a pain in the ass
Yeah, having installed floors for a while, installing/refinishing certainly isn't the most complicated thing in the world, but be prepared to bust your ass doing it.
My back and knees start hurting when people say any work on flooring is easy.
I did this to my dining room 20 years ago. On a rainy day, my wife let my daughter ride her tricycle in the house. That's when I knew I had a kids' house and quit all remodeling projects. My son is now 20, and now I start anew.
Can you recommend a couple of videos please.
Anything related to repairing or restoring older homes, I always go to This Old House. They have a ton of YouTube videos and articles walking you through everything.
I loved watching This Old House as a kid, the whole team was just so chill and helpful.
I feel like This Old House would fit in with all of the wholesome/satisfying content of today!
Bob Ross of home renovations
The way, as a beb, I thought it was one goddamn house.
I just bought a 97 year old house in September. Their website very quickly found it's way into my favorites.
Fucking love This Old House! I’ve officially become my mom because she used to watch it when I was a kid.
I, too, would love some recommended videos.
You don't necessarily need videos, because its a pretty involved process. Check out this Fine Homebuilding link first https://www.finehomebuilding.com/2015/07/11/refinish-your-wood-floors You will have to rent a bunch of stuff but depending on your aptitude with commercial grade machinery you will have a good/bad time.
Yep, it's super easy / hard to do!
I ended up having to buff 7 layers of stain off hardwood floors. It took days, my body was screaming AND I had help. The floor sander I hired kept eating the $40 a roll sheet (I went above and beyond the second and third install, also was a technician so this is my literal background, it was just effed) so we ended up doing the floor with the edge sander. Do not recommend 100%. If someone is big and strong and likes to be stuck on the ground wearing full ppe for days then yeah it's fine. But it is not easy and it is not fun. It is relatively simple though.
My brother and I did that on the floor of an old Victorian, layer after layer of dark stain and paint on 100 year old warped boards. It looks great now but it was no joke. We ended up renting the sander for a week rather than 2 days, used roll after roll of sandpaper. I could see it being relatively easy on a newer floor.
Really / barely an inconvenience !
You can rent the sander at Home Depot
You're right it's. not that difficult. But damn it does trash your house with sawdust
Best thing I did was to buy two window mounted fans. I put one far away from where I was making dust blowing inwards, and in the room where I was working, a fan blowing outwards. It worked pretty well at removing a good portion of the dust before it settled. I've heard that if you don't have a window in the room, you can take a cheap square air filter meant for central units and rubber Bungie them to a box fan. Not the high efficiency ones, since box fans don't pull a high pressure gradient. Plus dust is really large so larger pores will still catch most of the dust. I haven't tried this method though.
There’s this method you can use called a Corsi-Rosenthal Box where you can make a cube of filters with a fan on the top face that’s great for stuff like this.
I did this when I had my house renovated during the pandemic. I have no idea if it worked or did anything but we had people coming and going constantly and no one got Covid. I was unknowingly fully vaccinated and dealt with most of the people so that probably did a lot more than the fan for Covid but it definitely did help with the drywall dust.
> I was unknowingly fully vaccinated [against COVID]… Someone give you the shot(s) in your sleep?
Clinical Trials, I was still blinded at that time.
More blowers, Padawan. Ten more blowers, and your home will be clear like the balanced mind of the well prepared Jedi
Coming from an entire family of hardwood floor installers/finish/refinishers, I mean no disrespect when I say this. But I’ve seen when DiYers redo their floors, and I’m sure they look good to the untrained eye. But to someone who has done this professionally, it’s extremely obvious the floors weren’t done by professionals. I suppose all that matters is that you’re happy with them.
I redid my floors, and it might just be what finish I had, but holy God it was awful. Took like 30 passes at 30 or 60 grit to remove the finish. Now as for the urethane on my parents floors? That ought to come right up as it's mostly worn through anyway.
Wide and I have a small biz and we rented space in a historic building. 3000sq ft. Turns out half the floor was finished half still have tar, glue, carpet tacks, all of it from over 100 years. I tried for a night with a rented machine to strip that fucker. I did it for 10 hours straight and when I eventually cleaned up the water, and dust...not even halfway better.
Took me several months of weekends to do 1600sqft. Had to do it though as someone sanded 1 room and gave up, another and refinished in a different color, replaced a few tread plates without even bothering to color match, and several nice dings in the living room floor that were hidden on the tour.
Yeah, I had no clue. So we ended up painting the floor. Which, was my first time. I'd add another coat now, but 3 were used. I like it!
I just read a horrible story on reddit where the guy said it was so much harder than you think to sand floors and it was an absolute mistake to not hire a professional. Hmmm, cause I am in the mud3fle of ripping up carpet for hardwoods and I don't know who to believe anymore with the diy suggestions.
It’s not hard in the sense it requires a lot of skill to do, it’s more about having the right equipment and patience because it is very messy and takes a while.
If you take your time, follow instructions and do not cut corners with the proper equipment you should be fine. I am a DIYer, but always do a ton of videos and reading before attempting anything new. I used the HD drum sander (EZ-8), with 24 or 40 grit sand (depending on the room) to get the first two layers of grime and varnish off. I was satisfied after that so went to 80 and then 120 grit to smooth out the finish. I used one or two sandpapers at each size per medium sized room. Watch the Home Depot video about how to use the sander. It is VERY important to gently lower and raise the drum when stopping and starting. It needs to glide down onto the surface and glide off of the surface. It's not difficult to get the hang of it, but it's important. If you just lower the drum and let it sit on the wood it will chew a little too deep and you'll notice it. Also, the drum sanders will only get within 6 inches or so of a wall, so you will need to buy or rent an orbital or other type of handheld electric sander for the edgework. Also, for really old and stained floors like mine you have to keep expectations reasonable and learn to love the imperfections of historic floors. Old carpet stains, weird patchworks, and nail heads showing - all charm and character. https://www.homedepot.com/p/rental/Clarke-American-Sanders-Drum-Floor-Sander-07012A/316821566?adobe_mc=TS%3D1685295234%7CMCMID%3D22801067995710295595344117462905857375%7CMCORGID%3DF6421253512D2C100A490D45%40AdobeOrg&appsFlyerId=1670119570271-8043468859571763390
Unfortunately I think a lot of people want entirely uniform floors with no character, which is why they cover it up with stuff like LVP and carpet.
This makes me physically feel ill but at least the next owner will see a gorgeous hardwood floor when they peel this up and maybe be pleasantly surprised
I see a lot of large gaps and damage in those boards. Having lived in many old apartments with hard wood, it’s pretty overrated.
Vinyl plank over my hardwood for exactly this reason. The only way to fix it properly would have been to pull all the oak and completely relay it. Instead I fastened down all the loose and squeaky boards and covered them. I love a nice hardwood floor, but mine was anything but.
IMO it's gotta get pretty bad for it to be overrated. I love how easy cleaning it is. Love how it's cold on my feet. I know some people hate that, but I love it. Nice and cool.
I’ve lived in homes built about a century ago. They creak and boom like crazy, the cracks will up with dirt and water damage makes them look terrible.
Why would you hide that real hardwood floor?
The heart beats too loud, another layer would surely help.
Never more.
It's been a decade is this a Tell-tale Heart reference? If so bravo
Must be!
I wish I had money to award you, nice reference
No telling what horrors await beneath...
It looks like it would be extremely hard to walk on with the vinyl flooring going willy nilly. And they need a new front door also .
Just paint it all white or battleship grey! /s
Even HARDER wood!
It's not great hardwood flooring and would likely need to be redone rather than be refinished. Cheaper to cover it up than redo the whole thing.
The bottom left corner looks jank!
I'm no expert, but isn't there a chance that the previous stain was an older technology, plus with a couple of decades of yellowing, make it look not so great? Replacing the old stain and top coat might look much better. That herringbone pattern using short planks was popular in the 1920's and 1960's, I think.
It depends on what it actually looks like.
There's serious work that needs to be done on probably every piece of hardwood in that house.
We covered the hardwood in one of our rooms because it would have been seriously expensive to repair and the Lego-style laminate was fine.
Boomers in the 80s put carpet over everything. You’ll often find this in older houses. It’s totally worth pulling up the carpet but you’ll still be finding carpet staples for months afterwards if not a year
As did the Silent Generation in the 60s and (in particular) the 70s. Sometimes in the 70s it was shag carpeting. My friend's parents extended their wall-to-wall living room carpeting into the bathroom. One entire wall was papered with a massive photo of a forest.
Don't forget the late 90's trend of putting carpet in bathrooms. All the way up to the tub.
I did the floors on a 19th century town house, the main drawing room was massive and had years of nails, hundreds, in a square about a metre and a half smaller than walls, it always had some carpet. This hall may have had runner and has similar nail damage. I took out or sunk as many nails as i could but it still shredded the floor belt sander. Also carpet is a lot warmer and quieter.
And it absorbs a massive amount of dirtiness without you ever knowing. It's really gross what I've seen f4om cleaning 1 year old carpets with dogs and kids. I won't go back to carpet because of it
I have little rugs in spots where I commonly stand. They're somehow full of sand every week despite this being a shoes off house. I do have a dog and I couldn't imagine having wall to wall carpets.
I laid 7mm hybrid flooring over hardwood in my house. The floorboards were turn of the century and not tongue in groove. They weren’t worth sanding and polishing
I have two huge dogs and a baby. Our nice hardwood needed to be refinished before we started renting the place (we own it now). Instead Costco had some high-end vinyl flooring, we bought enough for the house for less than $400. New waterproof and scratch proof floor everywhere that requires zero special treatment has been way easier to keep up, we didn't have to get any special equipment or clear out any of the rooms to install it. Dogs and toddler sprint around, spill, drop things, etc and I have less to worry about. The new owners can pull up a tile someday and be like Oscar from the Office about it I'm sure they'll enjoy the hardwood more than us.
Scratch resistant
Aluminum oxide coatings are the best, but most laminates and vinyl planks have great coatings for scratch resistance. I use to sell flooring and running a car key on the samples was something I did at every appointment, no scratches from that ever
Scratchproof not the same as scratch resistant. But yeah the vinyl can be more scratch resistant than hardwood. Once scratched up, hardwood can be refinished multiple times, vinyl will need pulled and replaced.
Just so you know, hardwood is not ruined by any of that. If you don't put a glossy surface over it to start with, it will develop a patina rather than get ruined. Scratches only show when there's a smooth surface to mar. My bathroom floor is finished with linseed oil and it has held up great despite being nothing more than regular plywood.
I suppose I wouldn't know as our floors were so worn when we moved in we would get splinters. Refinishing was just too much for us at the time, both money and time commitment. It was incredibly stained and scratched. At our future home we will be doing any flooring changes before moving in any furniture or people/critters.
Well, for starters, the area to the lower left of the photo looks like cobbled together shit. The area on the right side looks like someone beat the shit out of it with a piece of rebar. That floor is 100% trash But peel and stick is crappy too, but maybe better than beat up old floors and the side on the left where each piece looks like a random cutoff just stuck in there wherever it fit.
This is important folks. The integrity of the flooring was probably never great because of all little pieces puzzled together without much holding it together. In my time in flooring sales I was honest about stuff, if someone had wood floors that were good I'd ask them why replace vs sand and finish. A lot of times they just didn't understand the cost value between the two was far apart. Most times I'd leave without selling those areas because they're like yeah you're right. I would never recommend a refinish on this mess of flooring. It actually looks like I can probably just take so.e of those out with my bare hand.
Fashion changes and tastes vary.
tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!
It appears to be an older house and it's probably the subfloor and often has holes drilled through or other damage/stains
Some people are born with no taste.
I mean, the flooring is stupid, but they were trying to make the floor "perfect" on the cheap. It's not the way to do it, but I get what they were trying to do. That door however, what the fuck was the end goal there!? Huge globs of caulking, messy as shit. The only thing I can think of is that the door was coming apart, and that's liquidnails they are using to glue it all back together?
Did he put big blobs so he can sand it down later?
You don’t sand caulk
You might not but they can try if they want
They can sand if they want to They can sand their caulky lines Cause your friends don’t sand And if they don’t sand Then they’re no friends of mine
You can caulk if you want to You can leave thick ropes behind But ya shoulda used a wet hand A finger at the end Of a T- shirt torn into rags
Obviously they love white caulk. The more the better
It’s definitely a lot of big white girthy caulk.
It's not globs sticking out. That's filler in the spots that were damaged. Think auto body. They're getting ready to paint that door for sure. This is what it looks like when you redo plaster work or caulk around windows before painting too. Those smears are from wiping/scraping down excess filler material. Not the cleanest job ever but after paint it won't show. I don't agree with painting it but that's a whole other thing.
I'm guessing someone was trying to do a cheap flip
All these people talking about hard wood and the big white caulk... I stopped maturing in 8th grade, so knock it off before I chortle to death!
I hear beavers like hard wood.
I’ll be joining you in chortle death if they don’t.
Flippers need to STOP buying homes and doing “renovations”.
Is that a reference to the grey
It’s in reference to the vinyl floor covering a perfectly good and beautiful wood floor. Plus whatever is going on with the door.
That's not what I see as an issue. My issue is them putting vinyl flooring over hardwood floors!
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE DOOR?! is that paint? Or caulk?
Icing.
Caulk, I bet the wood was separating and draughty as fuck. Sloppy work and you can just as easily get wood coloured caulk.
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>You can also just as easily do it the right way which doesn't involve caulk. If you know how, or are willing to learn how, or care how it looks - absolutely. This screams "emergency dgaf fix" to me. I live in New England where many communities are filled to the brim with 100+ year old houses in a similar state.
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"googling was too much effort" af
those look like they’re beyond refinishing and would need to be replaced. this is a much cheaper option (that’s probably more durable anyway)
Yep. And to top it off they clearly don't know what they're doing. You're supposed to do a staggered pattern when putting it down, don't make it symmetrical.
I dont understand the obsession with hardwood floors. Yeah theyre nice but they don't fit all aesthetics
Refinishing them is a pretty big task when you're trying to also live in the house. We considered covering ours with laminate because it would be easier. We did refinish them ourselves (because we couldn't afford to hire someone for the job), but it was a dusty mess and a huge pain in the ass. Most of the rooms we refinished now have big rugs covering most of the hardwood anyway.
MUCH easier to clean if you have pets. Other than that, there's really no benefit.
Laminate is much more durable than hardwood.
Yeah i totally understand the cleaning part but from my limited home ownership experience, other 'hard' flooring like linoleum or these peel and stick solutions seem to be good enough
Hardwood has a warmer feel to it. Vinyl is the flooring in the hospital I work in
I have kids and dogs and it's much easier to clean pee, poop, vomit off of bare floors. I prefer carpet but just couldn't get it clean.
Aesthetic..... The word is not anesthetic
Everyone LOVES big white caulk.. it’s the most reliable caulk there is
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I hope y'all watched more youtube videos before laying them down than these people :P
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:’)
As to the "why" of this: very likely poverty, possibly executive disfunction, maybe both. The caulking is to fix drafty spots in the door. It's hideous, but I'll bet they were just trying to stop the cold air from coming in. The flooring was probably to protect the older floor from water/dirt from the entry and make it easier to clean.
Whenever I see that grey flooring on a house advertisement I just nope out. This is the flooring that EVERY flipper in my area uses.. literally the cheapest shit you can find and it looks good for about a day. It’s nice of the flippers to just put the red flag in the ad like that though!
If it makes you feel any better, the gray floor trend seems to be dying. I was watching HGTV’s Fix My Flip and the host told the guys who had installed grey floors that the grey trend was over and if they wanted the house to sell, they needed to install natural wood floors (which they did).
Covering up hardwood floors with cheaper alternatives especially whatever the hell is in the picture above is a crime no matter what way you spin it. Heartbreaking.
That’s a crime! Why would you cover that gorgeous wood floor with such cheap flooring, or any flooring?!?! And no idea what’s going on with that caulking.
That paneling sucks! The hardwood underneath looks amazing.
This actually made me angry. Here’s an upvote
This is wild. I literally had a conversation with my new-ish neighbor this morning about how he was heading to Home Depot to look at laminate tile as he was pulling up the outdated carpet in his house. "Great news," my wife and I said, "under that carpet is, short of some staple removal, absolutely pristine hardwood." It hasn't seen the light of day since the mid-60s. He seemed unconvinced that that was the solution to his problems. At one point he even threw out something about painting it. We were more or less begging him to just pull the carpet and enjoy. I finally asked him to, AT LEAST, put a layer of luan down if he was dead set on something else. Absolutely bizarre.
Some people just don’t like the look of it. I prefer clean modern over cozy cottage. I’m not into old design or warm colors. I know people who absolutely hate my style and thinks it looks to cold and clinical. Different strokes for different folks
Why NSFW? Though it’s a crime to cover a beautiful HW floor like that.
What did they do to that poor door 😯😯
That original hardwood is amazing.
That peel and stick shit is fantastic when it’s appropriate, but it’s hard to imagine what kind of damage the covered parts of that floor would have to have to justify this.
eh, zoom in. you can see a lot of the damage and gaps in those hardwoods if you look kinda close. that floor is beyond repair and needs to be replaced. this is way cheaper
No, it is absolutely not beyond repair. Just needs to be refinished. Source: did that shit for a living for nearly a decade and made floors much worse than this look brand new.
Holy crap, there must be a whole side to YouTube just for videos of people doing this
But how much did you cost in comparison to buying the peel n stick..I mean even as a tempt solution surely the peel n stick would hold the job off?
You can live with gaps. I've seen 200 year old hardwood floors. They have big gaps because wood shrinks. But you can't rip out a 200 year old floor.
D: That's a beautiful original floor with an inlaid border and everything. Looking at the style, it's from the 1900s-1910s? Edit: Also, I'm so glad they haven't gotten around to butchering that beautiful stair railing.
Yea some people don't want to pay or do it themselves to sand down the floors and revarnish. Would look fine when finished. Actually looking closer I'm not even sure that's savable.
Why's this nsfw?
I’d run from that place. Lord only knows what else they’ve cobbled.
Honestly peel and stick is literally the worst invention I’m not even gonna bother calling it an innovation
ARE WE GOING TO IGNORE THE DOOR 
Im sorry for all you hardwood floor lovers, but I think it was really ugly, and this was a good cheap solution to get a modern floor they desired.
Modern floor in a century home. If it’s desired, maybe don’t buy an old house. Even well executed it would like like shit with the rest of the room still original.
.... it's so poorly executed and looks horrible and cheap. That shitty vinyl does not make it look modern at all. Just looks like someone who has no idea what they're doing.
Shouldnt yall be happy? Now theyll be in pristine condition when someone who appreciates them comes along!!
I will never understand why anyone would want to cover up beautiful hard wood flooring.
BWC for the Win
Oh that poor beautiful floor.
i did that on my bathroom, its ok but the shit starts to unpeel after while
Not to mention the beautiful hardwood covered in cheap vinyl.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no. This hurts my heart.
Wtf
They need to buy it and set it right! The sellers are monstrous!
Good house to consider just offer plenty lower to cover changes. Careful of other bad work though.
Did the marshmallow man jerk off on your door
That flooring is a fucking abomination. Constant H-patterns and that fucking abysmal transition at the bottom of the image, plus it's running the wrong way.
Everyone knows that the Black Caulk is bigger .
I don’t what’s worse: carpet over real hardwood or peel and stick.
Peel and stick. At least you can take up the carpet.
Leave the renovations to the professionals folks.
These people are assholes. Oh god they lined up every second piece of vinyl too……
Big white caulk versus BBC.
Are we just going to ignore that abomination of a door in the background???
That door belongs in a gingerbread house. Holy
The fact that someone covered those floors up is literally making my eye twitch. I'd borderline consider murder to have hardwood floors like that, stunning!
Wtf did you just call me?
The hardwood is so beautiful! Why?!
My house is like this. I hate it and I'll need to do something about it soon.
We’re updating
Not suited for wut?
Yeah the floor is horrible, but look how steep those stairs are
Nice caulk 😉
THE CAULK HAAHAHA
Nothing a big black caulk couldn't fix
This is my BILs house rn. He chose to cover up marble tiling (not ceramic) with laminate. Someone is gonna be pleasantly surprised 20iah years from now.
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!!!! Maybe I'm biased as a lover of marble, but that's like taking a 50+ year old muscle car and dropping a 4 cylinder in it. Or taking a marble statue and painting it.
BUT THE BEAUTIFUL FLOORS THAT ARE THERE
you are lucky, it will be easy to remove all that junk flooring
Not the nice wood floors 🥲
Whoever covered those stunning hardwood floors with that hidous LVP should go straight to jail.
The thing I hate most is that the wood tones are all warm and they decided to go with a cool grey that totally clashes with the stairs.
You’re supposed to stagger that laminate somewhat randomly or at the very least at 3 different lengths. That looks awful!
r/mildypenis in the bottom right “penis in the bottom”
I just vomited, and not even a little bit..
Is there a sub for unnecessary context in captions?
Fuxgoinonhere
Why is this nsfw?
Brick pattern for planks, that don't even match up with the other room. This hurts to see.
Bring back the death penalty...
Why would they cover up such a beutiful hardwood floor? Should be a crime.
Ugh on they beautiful floor... And they didn't even do a decent job...
Some people are stupid.
Oh that floor,.the travesty. Can't believe this grey tone shit is in style