Hardwood floor refinishing in West Milford, NJ

Powell Flooring is a family business that has been sanding wood floors since 1920, and in West Milford since 2008. Four generations of the same family, and the owner on nearly every job site. If your floors are dull, scratched, graying at the doorways or just tired of the color they were given in 1978, they can almost always be brought back.

What sanding and finishing actually is

We take the old finish off, flatten the wood, and put a new finish on. Done properly it is not a repair. It is the floor you already own, returned to the condition it was in when it went down.

Most floors can take this several times over their life. Solid strip oak has a lot of wood above the tongue. Engineered wood has less, and how much depends on the wear layer, so that is the first thing we look at.

Our default, and why

Sanded smooth. Then either no stain at all, or one coat of Duraseal or Minwax. Then three coats of a waterborne finish in a satin sheen.

That is what we do unless there is a reason not to, and it is a good default for a house people actually live in. Waterborne finish cures harder and faster than oil, it does not amber the way oil does, and satin hides the ordinary traffic of a hallway better than gloss. Three coats rather than two because the third one is the one you are still standing on in ten years.

No stain at all is more common than people expect. Sanded, sealed, finished, left the color the wood already is. If you are not sure, that is worth seeing beside a stained board before you decide.

Every stain color, photographed on real red oak

Dust

All sanding makes dust. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.

Our machines run dust collection, we seal the openings we can, and we clean up properly at the end. What that means in practice is that the work is contained to the rooms being sanded and the house is livable again the same day. It does not mean there is no dust anywhere, and we would rather say so now than have you discover it on a windowsill later.

Stairs

Stairs come up more than any other single thing customers describe to us, and they are their own job. A tread is sanded by hand where the machine cannot reach, risers and nosings each want different attention, and a staircase takes a skilled person a lot longer per square foot than an open floor does.

They are also the part of the house every visitor touches. Worth doing at the same time as the floors they connect.

When refinishing is the wrong answer

Sometimes it is. We will tell you.

If the boards have been sanded down to the fasteners, if there is widespread water damage or movement in the subfloor, or if the wear layer on an engineered floor is already thin, sanding again either will not work or will not last. In those cases we would rather sell you a floor than a disappointment.

What a day looks like

Furniture out, or moved room to room if that suits you better. Sanding is the loud part and it is usually the first day. Stain, if you are having it, goes on after that and needs to dry before finish. Each coat of finish needs time before the next one.

You can normally walk on it in socks well before you can put the furniture back. We will give you the real timings for your floor when we see it, because they change with the weather, the wood and the number of coats.

Where we work

West Milford and Hewitt are most of what we do, along with Oak Ridge, Newfoundland, Ringwood, Highland Lakes, Wanaque and Kinnelon. Across the state line we are regularly in Warwick and Greenwood Lake.

If you are a little outside that, ask anyway.

Getting a number

We do not publish a rate per square foot for sanding and finishing, because a rate without a scope is not a price. What moves it is the area, the number of stairs, whether you are staining, the condition the floor is in now, and what else is going on in the house.

Somebody comes out, measures properly, and tells you what it costs. That is free and there is no obligation.