Cleaning old hardwood floors?

Mountainmohawk@beehaw.org to Do It Yourself@beehaw.org – 19 points –

Hey all,

So I will be moving into a 70 year old house soon. There is some old carpet that needs removed. I already had a contractor come out and he tore a corner up and inspected it and said the hardwood floors underneath looked good.

He gave a quote of $2700 to remove the carpet and clean the floors for 3 rooms.

I was having some friends over this weekend to help clean and was debating doing it ourselves. I have a decent idea of getting the carpet out, but are unsure of what should be done with the hardwood floor.

Any help or pointers?

6

What do you mean by "cleaning" the hardwood floor? What needs to be cleaned off them? Is the contractor going to sand the floors and recoat them with something? If it's just a matter of tearing up the carpets, I wouldn't pay $2700 for that. If the floors need sanding, I absolutely would never do that myself. (source: I used to own a floor sander and realized I shouldn't do that myself.)

Yeah, the two things I'm willing to pay someone else to do is hardwood refinishing and drywall taping/plastering.

I'm with you. Sometimes I get stuck hanging drywall, but even then, I'll pay someone else to finish it.

Be careful with asbestos aswell, some old carpet glues had asbestos in them.

I don't know about glue, but it was for sure used as carpet padding in a certain Era. Worth looking up when that was and having it tested.