What To Expect
You can expect clean cut, hardworking individuals who will treat you and your home with the utmost respect. Our first priority is to protect and work gently around your valuable belongings. We want you to feel comfortable and are happy to answer your questions and help put you at ease with the process. We understand that having work done in your home can feel overwhelming at times, but we want to assure you that you are in our experienced and capable hands.
We can sum up our philosophy by saying, we pride ourselves providing 'old fashioned' service, but with the latest modern methods.
Before work can commence, the floor area should be completely cleared. Generally it is the customer's responsibility to move the furniture. If our customer cannot arrange this themselves, we highly recommend hiring professional movers who are insured should unfortunate damage occur. The furniture can be stored in another area of the home, on plastic sheeting in the garage, in a POD in the driveway, or even taken to storage off site if desired.
SANDING/REFINISHING (But without the dust!)
Having your floors refinished can be very exciting. We can make an old, tired floor look virtually brand new. Scratches and scuffs can be sanded right out with powerful, industrial equipment attached to specialty engineered dust capture vacuum system which are designed for this process.
Whats more, your imagination is your only limitation when it comes to changing the look and feel of your home. Floors can lightened or darkened, enriching the grain of the wood, a modern grey/brown or even a lightly whitened Nordic style clear finish. We can apply a silky Satin sheen coating (the most popular), a low lustre matte finish; or if you prefer a raw look nearly flat look. It all depends on your preference and the feel you want, how much light you may or may not want reflected in that area.
INDOOR AIR QUALITY
The best part as we see it, you don’t have to deal with noxious odours and high levels of VOC’s in your home. That’s because for many years now, we have perfected the use of high quality water-based finishes, helping to keep the air quality fresh and placing a priority on your family's health. This gives you and the environment a huge advantage over the older, toxic, oil based finishes, still being used by a number of contractors, not for your consideration, but because of its low cost to their bottom line. We use these products in our homes, so even though they come at a price there are no cutting of corners by using inferior coatings for our jobs.
It’s a big job though, so be prepared for some noise and disruption. You should also be prepared to be impressed by the lack of dust we will leave behind, and the quality of the finished product we routinely produce for our clients. We have invested in a number of new machines and powerful dust collectors, hoses and fitting to make it all work for removing the dust while sanding. Therefore there is no need to drape plastic across doorways and cover literally everything in your house, the house can simply be cleaned and dusted as per usual after we have completed.
WRAPPING IT UP (our final points)
After the finish has been applied, please avoid use of the floor until it has dried, typically 3-4 hours. The finish layers will get harder by the hour, so avoid heavy traffic and and moving of furniture for a minimum of 48 hours after our final coat. With the use of water based finishes, this wait time has been greatly reduced from the traditional cure/harden time of solvent and oil-based urethanes.
We recommend putting felt pads on the feet of all your furniture before moving it back into the room. This will minimize unnecessary damage. Items should not be slid back into place as this could produce a scuff mark, or loss of shine on the freshly finished floor. Lift and place.
STAINING
The application of stain is an art and not a science. Minor imperfections and irregularities are completely normal. In order to avoid having to touch up some areas of baseboard where the stain or finish may have inadvertently been applied, some clients choose to have the baseboards removed and then replaced or reaffixed later on, although this is not absolutely necessary. Often, just the quarter rounds can be removed and reinstalled or repainted. We can provide stain ring samples or sample boards for the standard colours offered by Bona DryFast colour (a professional floor stain product, with excellent highlighting characteristics).
As your floor ages, some colour change may occur. This can be minimized by limiting exposure to direct sunlight, and periodically moving your furniture around. Although this is a less common problem with the use of water based finishes.
Minor cracks between the floor boards are also considered normal. You will find that they appear and disappear between seasons of high and low humidity. How much the natural woof floor moves depends upon it’s environment, so controlling low humidity in winter and high humidity in our sticky summer days will help immensely.
Keep your floors looking their best by cleaning them with a product specific to hardwood floors, we like Bona’s Wood Floor Cleaning Solution, which is available in many retailers (Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Lowes, and others). Never use a wet mop as this can over time promote too high moisture in the wood and result in "cupped floors", or in extreme cases rot.
We can sum up our philosophy by saying, we pride ourselves providing 'old fashioned' service, but with the latest modern methods.
Before work can commence, the floor area should be completely cleared. Generally it is the customer's responsibility to move the furniture. If our customer cannot arrange this themselves, we highly recommend hiring professional movers who are insured should unfortunate damage occur. The furniture can be stored in another area of the home, on plastic sheeting in the garage, in a POD in the driveway, or even taken to storage off site if desired.
SANDING/REFINISHING (But without the dust!)
Having your floors refinished can be very exciting. We can make an old, tired floor look virtually brand new. Scratches and scuffs can be sanded right out with powerful, industrial equipment attached to specialty engineered dust capture vacuum system which are designed for this process.
Whats more, your imagination is your only limitation when it comes to changing the look and feel of your home. Floors can lightened or darkened, enriching the grain of the wood, a modern grey/brown or even a lightly whitened Nordic style clear finish. We can apply a silky Satin sheen coating (the most popular), a low lustre matte finish; or if you prefer a raw look nearly flat look. It all depends on your preference and the feel you want, how much light you may or may not want reflected in that area.
INDOOR AIR QUALITY
The best part as we see it, you don’t have to deal with noxious odours and high levels of VOC’s in your home. That’s because for many years now, we have perfected the use of high quality water-based finishes, helping to keep the air quality fresh and placing a priority on your family's health. This gives you and the environment a huge advantage over the older, toxic, oil based finishes, still being used by a number of contractors, not for your consideration, but because of its low cost to their bottom line. We use these products in our homes, so even though they come at a price there are no cutting of corners by using inferior coatings for our jobs.
It’s a big job though, so be prepared for some noise and disruption. You should also be prepared to be impressed by the lack of dust we will leave behind, and the quality of the finished product we routinely produce for our clients. We have invested in a number of new machines and powerful dust collectors, hoses and fitting to make it all work for removing the dust while sanding. Therefore there is no need to drape plastic across doorways and cover literally everything in your house, the house can simply be cleaned and dusted as per usual after we have completed.
WRAPPING IT UP (our final points)
After the finish has been applied, please avoid use of the floor until it has dried, typically 3-4 hours. The finish layers will get harder by the hour, so avoid heavy traffic and and moving of furniture for a minimum of 48 hours after our final coat. With the use of water based finishes, this wait time has been greatly reduced from the traditional cure/harden time of solvent and oil-based urethanes.
We recommend putting felt pads on the feet of all your furniture before moving it back into the room. This will minimize unnecessary damage. Items should not be slid back into place as this could produce a scuff mark, or loss of shine on the freshly finished floor. Lift and place.
STAINING
The application of stain is an art and not a science. Minor imperfections and irregularities are completely normal. In order to avoid having to touch up some areas of baseboard where the stain or finish may have inadvertently been applied, some clients choose to have the baseboards removed and then replaced or reaffixed later on, although this is not absolutely necessary. Often, just the quarter rounds can be removed and reinstalled or repainted. We can provide stain ring samples or sample boards for the standard colours offered by Bona DryFast colour (a professional floor stain product, with excellent highlighting characteristics).
As your floor ages, some colour change may occur. This can be minimized by limiting exposure to direct sunlight, and periodically moving your furniture around. Although this is a less common problem with the use of water based finishes.
Minor cracks between the floor boards are also considered normal. You will find that they appear and disappear between seasons of high and low humidity. How much the natural woof floor moves depends upon it’s environment, so controlling low humidity in winter and high humidity in our sticky summer days will help immensely.
Keep your floors looking their best by cleaning them with a product specific to hardwood floors, we like Bona’s Wood Floor Cleaning Solution, which is available in many retailers (Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Lowes, and others). Never use a wet mop as this can over time promote too high moisture in the wood and result in "cupped floors", or in extreme cases rot.
