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June 14, 2007
Refinishing Parquet
We pulled up the carpet on the parlor floor of our new (to us) limestone and found a parquet floor in fairly good condition. Our contractor tells us he can refinish it and get us a good result WITHOUT sanding. Is he telling the truth or fibbing?
Comments
I don't know what he is talking about, but he may want to "buff" using a light abrasive material, not sandpaper on his machine. I am not sure what they use, but it is some kind of synthetic pad which can take the finish, grime, etc off but avoid taking off any wood. The old parquets are very thin (about 1/4 of an inch) which were laid over subflooring, so your contractor may be trying to avoid scraping any wood off the thin parquets. That is all I can think of.
Good luck with your new place.
Posted by: donatella at June 15, 2007 10:15 AM
People often rub parquet floors down with steel wool and mineral spirits and then apply a new coat of poly. If the floors aren't in bad shape it might work fine. Perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Posted by: cb at June 15, 2007 10:57 AM
He may be right depending on the condition. Parquet does have a finite life because it can only be refinished so many times. Heights Woodworking does beautiful restoration. Do you have missing pieces? How thick are the pieces? Are they dry or cracked? Sometimes when the wood is dry or water damaged it needs to be sanded down to the "good" wood.
Posted by: anonymous at June 15, 2007 11:26 AM
Did you see sandless floor refinishing in the forum from yesterday? I don't know anything about it but thought it may be interesting.
Posted by: anonymous at June 15, 2007 11:39 AM
10:15am, usually if the floors are in fairly good condition they can be gone over with a sanding machine using steel wool pads instead of sand paper...
Posted by: bren at June 15, 2007 12:13 PM
OP here. Thanks for the comments. There are some missing pieces but the floors are otherwise in pretty fair shape (no cracks). The contractor did say something about buffing so I think that you are right, 10:15. Thanks again, brownstoners.
Posted by: OP at June 15, 2007 5:27 PM
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