Another wood floor question

The property i have just bought has wooden floors that i intend to polish.Some people have tried to talk me out of doing it in a rental as they will not be looked after.I plan on having carpet in the bedrooms.I will only polish the living areas and kitchen.

I intend to go a light colour/stain and possibly a low gloss or satin finish. Would this be the go with a rental? Boards are cypris pine i believe.
Also the kitchen has a lot of tar left over after the lino removal. Has anyone had any trouble polishing through this.i have been told the tar may have stained deep into the timber but the scrap marks i have put in the wood so far seem to show clean timber under the surface. I plan on using a coarse sandpaper to remove the tar or at worst a electric wood plane.

Any other info on this would be great.

Cheers

Don't stain them!

Polish them as is, warts and all, put polyurethane on top (which will make the colour darker, varnish/oil/etc just does that). Very hard wearing, and if the floors have chips and marks and stains already you get 'character'.

Too easy.

ETA: oh, you mean polish YOURSELF? Ye gods, don't do it. Its harder than it seems and if this is your first time it'll look terrible. Get the professionals out.

RumpledElf said:

ETA: oh, you mean polish YOURSELF? Ye gods, don't do it. Its harder than it seems and if this is your first time it'll look terrible. Get the professionals out.

Click to expand...

"Double ye gods". Wife and I tried it many years ago and I'm very handy with tools etc, but I'd never try it again ... the professionals do a much better job and I'm happy to pay them to do it.

Martin

i'll triple that. we polished two houses - and then had the pros do the 3rd. never again will we do the job ourselves as it looks so dodgy compared to what the professionals do.

we had a 3 queen sized bedrooms, hall, lounge, entry, dining, kitchen and sunroom polished on our current ppor for around $2500 - although the floor had been previously polished so there were no sticking up nails etc.

I endorse the professionals as well.

Although I wouldn't stain the floor, particularly if it is Cypress (trim a sliver off and smell it - if it has an antiseptic whiff then its Cypress).

There are many ways to go with finishes.

The solvent based polyurethanes (these are the traditional finishes), these are the hard wearing, cheaper finishes which yellow over time. They have a degree of toxicity in them until they become inert - the industry is tending to move away from these finishes.

The water based polyurethanes which are also hard wearing, but dearer. They dont yellow as quickly and have much lower degree of toxicity.

Hardwaxes, are relatively new. They dont yellow, are dearer but you get better coverage. They can also be repaired a lot better then the polys. This finish (treatex from whittlewax.com.au is my current preferred finish for Cypress and Radiata floors. I think the satin looks superb.

I wouldn't worry too much about the stains in the timber, they sort of blend in once the floor is finished.