Found hardwood under your carpet? What to check next

You lifted the corner of the carpet and there is wood underneath. That is very often good news. A lot of older homes around here were carpeted over perfectly good oak, and most of those floors can be brought back.

Before you get too excited, or too worried, here is what to look at.

Is it actually a wood floor?

Oak flooring is narrow boards, usually a couple of inches wide, running the length of the room and fitted edge to edge. If what you see is large flat sheets, that is the subfloor, and the finished floor was never put down. That happens too, and we can talk about what goes on top.

Solid or engineered?

Find a heating register and lift the cover. You can see the edge of the board there. A solid oak board is one piece of wood all the way through, usually three quarters of an inch thick. An engineered board shows layers, with a thinner layer of real wood on top.

Both can be refinished. Solid oak has more wood to work with, so it can be sanded many times over its life. With engineered, how thick that top layer is decides whether it can be sanded at all, which is the first thing we check.

What the carpet leaves behind

Staples and tack strip holes around the edge of the room are normal. They sit close to the walls and can usually be filled.

Pad stuck to the floor comes off with the sanding.

Dark stains are the one to look at closely. A light water mark often sands out. Deep black stains, usually from a pet over a long time, often go right through the board. Those boards get cut out and replaced, and new oak is stained to match the rest. Matching new wood to an old floor is the part of this work we are best at.

What we do

We take up the carpet, the pad and the tack strip. We sand down to bare wood, then either leave it natural or put on one coat of stain. Then three coats of a waterborne finish in a satin sheen. If you want to see stain colors on real oak first, we have them all shot on red oak.

More on how refinishing works, and how long the house is out of use, is on our refinishing page.

You do not have to pull it all up first

Leave the carpet where it is. We can look at a corner and a register and tell you what you have, what it needs, and what it costs. The estimate is free, it is done in your home, and there is no obligation.