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Post by NicL on Mar 23, 2017 23:18:31 GMT
I have decided its time to get the old carpet up and sand and polish the floorboards. 4 rooms - Master bedroom, small study, lounge and family room. Family room is going to be a bigger job as there is only particle board (or something like that) under the carpet so new boards will have to be laid.
My question is probably ridiculous but I can't get my head around how this will all happen. ie. Do we have to move all the furniture out of all rooms at once to have the work done? There is nowhere left in the house that it would all fit so it would have to go into storage and we'd have to move to a hotel. Do companies just do a couple of rooms at a time?
Have you been through this? Be gentle, I'm not an experienced renovator.
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perumbula
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,439 
Location: Idaho
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Post by perumbula on Mar 23, 2017 23:22:31 GMT
The best way is to move everything out so they can do it all at once. You should be able to get a smooth finish with no visible line at the thresholds if you do it this way. It may even be cheaper because it will take less overall time for the company.
If you absolutely can't do it all at once, I'm sure you can find someone who can do it in two trips.
Make sure you get references and and photos of their past work. Floors can be tricky and you need someone who will do a good job restoring what you have.
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basketdiva
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,699
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Post by basketdiva on Mar 23, 2017 23:28:33 GMT
If the furniture won't fit into your garage, then see if you can rent a POD and have it sit on your driveway while the work is being done. Keep in mind that the sanding will make a lot of dust-no matter how much try to prevent it. Store all electronics away from the house. Ask about registers being taped off.
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Post by Darcy Collins on Mar 23, 2017 23:54:48 GMT
First off, evaluate the flooring under the carpet carefully. Often people assume it's in decent shape and are highly unhappy to learn that the reason a previous owner put down carpet is because the flooring was in terrible shape. It's an incredibly messy job. If you are at all able to, I highly recommend moving everything out, taping off the rest of the house and staying in a hotel.
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Post by NicL on Mar 24, 2017 1:47:30 GMT
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happymomma
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,083
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Post by happymomma on Mar 24, 2017 2:09:55 GMT
My then-fiance and I tore up the carpet and refinished my OLD hardwood floors many years ago.
It was quite a process and we definitely didn't do a professional-looking job, but this is an old house and it all fit together nicely.
It was a long process and it was so long ago I can't remember everything I'm sure. But here is what I do remember.
First we tore up the carpet and pad which was this nasty disintegrating black stuff. In some places the black wavy lines remain faintly, even after tons of sanding. But...the floor was in really good shape, much to my delight!
Next we poured some kind of stripper on it and scraped for many many nights, a little area at a time. Then we rented one of those big sanding wheels and the ex sanded it all down. We used a hand-sander in places too.
We washed it with whatever Home Depot told us to, (memory) and let it dry. Warning: don't drip ANYTHING on the floor at this stage! LOL. I was washing the walls down with Murphy's Oil Soap because yes and got a few droplets on the floor. It dried, but those spots must have formed a barrier to the polyurethane because you can see where it was. Weird.
Anyway, next we spread the thick polyurethane with a special mop-looking applicator and smoothed it all out. This is why I say we didn't do a great job, because it left little bubbles in some places. We had to stay elsewhere that night because the fumes were horrible. All in all, it looks very nice and I get compliments on my floor often, which I think is odd...
It was a huge amount of work and took us rookies a long long time to accomplish the task. It wasn't cheap as the chemicals, sander rental, round pads for the sander, etc. cost quite a bit but only a fraction of the quotes we had gotten. I'm totally not a perfectionist and knew I'd be satisfied with the way it turned out doing it ourselves in relation to the money we saved. One drawback was that we spent a lot of time on our hands and knees and with all of the scraping, it was quite a physical job.
We did moved everything out of the living and dining room that we were doing and put plastic up to the other rooms when we were sanding. I don't recall it being horribly dusty though.
Good luck!
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Post by AussieMeg on Mar 27, 2017 1:02:53 GMT
It's definitely better / cheaper / easier to do it all at once. When we pulled our carpet up we put as much furniture as we could in the rooms where we were not changing the floor coverings (family room, bathroom, laundry). The rest went into the garage and we kept our cars in the driveway. We did it in February which as you know is summer here and hardly any rain, so we could also put some stuff in the backyard out in the open.
ETA: we were getting new carpet, not polishing floorboards, so it was all done in one day. We were able to move everything back in that night. It will obviously be a longer process for you and I guess you will probably have to move into a hotel for a few days.
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Post by newfcathy on Mar 27, 2017 2:44:20 GMT
We had our living room, dining room, stairs, upstairs hallway, & 2 of 3 bed rooms. We pushed what we could onto the enclosed front porch & the third bedroom (both had fairly new wall-to-wall carpeting).
I had a POD dropped in the driveway, hired movers, then the floor guys did their magic. We moved into a hotel for 6 days. Then the movers returned & put everything back.
It was the best way for us.
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