Pull the carpet up in a St. Louis brick two-flat and there is a good chance you are looking at red oak that has been down since the house was built. Sometimes it is beautiful under the padding. Sometimes it is stapled, water stained, patched with the wrong species, and cut through where somebody moved a floor register in 1978. Refinishing original hardwood is one of the most common jobs we do around here, and it is the one where what we find on day one changes the plan.
What Is Actually Under the Carpet
The local housing stock is generous this way. Brick two-flats in south city, gingerbread bungalows with their carved porch trim, shotgun houses, the 1920s Tudors and Cape Cods out through University City and Webster Groves - almost all of them got oak strip flooring as standard equipment. Then the sixties and seventies happened and a great deal of it went under wall-to-wall carpet.
What we typically find when that carpet comes off: tack strip holes an inch in from every wall, staples by the hundred, a darker border where a rug sat for forty years, pet stains that soaked through to the subfloor in a favorite corner, and cut-in patches where a register, a radiator or a wall got moved. Once in a while there is adhesive from a layer of linoleum somebody put down in the kitchen. None of that is a deal breaker. All of it is information.
How Much Floor Is Left: The Wear Layer
A 3/4 inch solid strip floor has roughly a quarter inch of usable wood above the tongue. That is the entire budget. A careful sand takes a small fraction of it, so a floor that has never been touched has plenty of life left. The problem is history. Old drum machines in unpracticed hands took far more than they needed to, and a floor that was sanded in 1965, again in 1988 and again in 2004 may be close to done.
You can check this yourself before anyone quotes it. Pull a floor register and look at the cut edge of the boards, or lift a threshold at a doorway. Measure from the surface down to the top of the tongue. Nail heads showing at the seams, or a visible tongue where boards have gapped, means you are at the end of the road for full sanding. That is not the end of the floor. A screen and recoat leaves the wood alone and puts fresh finish on top.
| What we find | What it means | Typical path |
|---|---|---|
| A quarter inch above the tongue, floor is flat | Never sanded, or sanded once | Full sand, stain, two to three coats |
| Thin wear layer, nail heads visible at seams | One sanding left, maybe none | Screen and recoat, or buff and coat |
| Cupped or crowned boards over a damp basement | Moisture problem to solve first | Dry the space out, let it flatten, then sand |
| Missing boards, rot, old register cuts | Patch and weave before sanding | Source matching oak, lace it in, sand the whole floor |
Patching and Weaving In New Boards
Weaving means cutting the damaged boards out in a staggered pattern and letting the new pieces run into the old field at different lengths, the way the original floor was laid. Done right, you cannot find the repair once the floor is finished. Done as a rectangle of new wood dropped into a hole, you will see it from the doorway for the rest of the time you own the house.
Matching matters. Red oak and white oak look similar raw and take stain differently, so we match species first. Standard 2 1/4 inch strip is still made, so width is rarely the issue. Age is. Hundred-year-old oak has ambered to a warm gold and new solid hardwood is pale by comparison. After sanding they are closer than you would think, and the stain step closes the rest of the gap. Isolated damage from a leak or a moved wall is often a floor repair rather than a whole-house job.
Stain Matching, and Why We Test on Your Floor
Stain samples on a piece of scrap tell you very little. Red oak has a pink undertone that fights certain grays. White oak drinks stain differently. Your light is your light, and a color that reads perfect at two in the afternoon by a south window can go orange under a table lamp at night.
So we sand a clean patch in the actual room, lay down three or four candidates side by side, label them and leave. You look at them in the morning, in the afternoon and with the lamps on, then you pick. It takes an extra hour and it prevents the one mistake in this trade that cannot be undone quickly. Natural with a clear finish is having a long moment right now, and on old red oak it is often the most honest choice you can make.
Curious what is under your carpet? We will pull a corner and tell you what you have before you commit to anything.
Book a free in-home estimateLiving Through the Job
A typical whole-floor refinish on a main level runs three to five days, longer with heavy patching or a dark stain that needs more dry time. Dustless sanding pulls the dust at the machine, and we tape off the rest of the house, so you are not repainting when it is over. You will still smell finish. Water-based finishes are far milder than the old oil-based ones and cure faster, which is usually what people choose when they are staying in the house.
- Day one: furniture out, carpet, tack strip and staples removed, patching started.
- Day two: rough sanding through the grits, with edges and corners done by hand.
- Day three: stain goes down, then the first coat once it is dry.
- Days four and five: additional coats, with light abrasion between them.
- Socks after about 24 hours, furniture back after several days, area rugs last, usually two weeks out.
What It Costs
Refinishing runs $3.50 to $6 per square foot here for sand, stain and two to three coats. Patching, weaving and heavy staple removal get quoted separately because they vary so much from house to house. Stairs are their own line at $60 to $150 per tread, and they are worth doing in the same pass so the color matches the floor. Set that against $9 to $16 per square foot for new solid hardwood and the math on saving an original floor usually makes itself.
Bring photos to the showroom at 149 Weldon Pkwy in Maryland Heights, call (314) 897-4383, or book a free in-home estimate and we will come look at the floor with you. You can also read what neighbors have said about the refinishing crew on our reviews page. Your floor is our mission, and on these old oak floors the mission is mostly about taking off as little wood as possible.
