I want to refinish the oak hardwood floors in three bedrooms connected by a common hallway. Since I am working by myself, I will be unable to keep a wet edge at all times if I do the bedrooms and the hall at the same time. My question is if I do each room (stopping at the door threshold) and allowing the bedroom floors to dry before doing the hallway will I end up with noticeable transition points in the doorways? Any suggestions on how to avoid this problem?
I did a thousand feet of oil based poly in my house by myself. No way to keep an edge wet when you have to brush in the edges. I did the whole floor one day. I guess I must have done the upstairs hallway and the step treads and then did the first floor. A second coat the second day. It went fairly fast but that was ten years ago so memory could be faulty. I brushed in the edges and used a lambs wool applicator to mop in the bulk of the floor. New house with no furniture so I did as much as I could in a day.
Some f>I want to refinish the oak hardwood floors in three bedrooms
If you have to do all the rooms separately you will have transitions though the extent to which they are noticable can vary but you WILL see them. I am not sure if there is a typo in your post or not but if you intend to coat the entire floor in one shot you should easily be able to maintain wet transtions unless the rooms are very large and you have a lot of very precise cutting in to do. Most generally two people can "fly" with one cutting and one mopping. If you are working alone, find a friend. We have done a lot of hardwood refinishing and I can keep three bedrooms (say 12x12 or less) and a hall entirely wet easily by myself. One thing to remember, is even fast drying poly (oil) will have open times measured in hours on the final coat (the one that matters) in an average house. Even Minwax (most common in home centers) calling out 4hrs drying time is probably fast by 8 hours. With mopping on, you will likely see your third coat take 8-10 hours to be lightly walkable. First coat may be sandable in 8-10 hours, second coat in 12- or more hours. Your fist coat will dry faster, second coat slower, third coat even slower. Sanding between coats will allow you to deal with the imperfections due to the first coat drying slower but it wil still be slow enough to stay relatively wet.
One hint I will give you is not to use a lambs wool applicator. They suck. What we use is a piece of foam wrapped around the applicator. We use to use foam carpet pad until all switched to the chipped pad (small pieces of foam boneded into a sheet). Now we go to a fabric supply/sewing shop (joann fabrics) and we buy sheets of 3/4" thick foam used in upholstry. We cut it into rectangles to fit the applicator. I dont care how much you clean a lambs wool applicator it still sheds. Even throwing it in the washer doesnt eliminate shedding. The foam holds a lot of material spreads even, and never sheds. Some people laddle the finish onto the floor then spread, some dunk the applicator. We tend to do a blend of both. We shallow dunk to keep the applicator saturated and we laddle out finish a bit to feed the floor trying to minimize bubbles.
The concern I had was that if I do the whole floor at once (3 rooms with closets plus hallway), I will have to do the 3 bedrooms first and then the hallway. I was afraid that by the time I started the hallway, the first room I did would get tacky. The last time I did this, I used the minwax super fast drying poly (recoats in 3-4 hours) which got tacky fast. I could use the regular poly but this floor has the only access to my bathrooms.
I'll assume that the flooring is in line with the bedroom doors(long lenght through the hallway). Tape a stop edge under each door's threshhold at a seam between each wood strip and do one room at a time. Then tape the other side of the stop edge and do the hall way. This way, if you manage to get sloppy, it's under the door's bottom. Takes a bit longer maybe but does a nice job (as nice as the taping)
I would agree with Jim, neighbors, a weekend vacation for the wife and kids, or even more creative make them climb through the window with a step ladder or something. Kids would love it. The only problem is you generally want a quiet house, no doors opening and closing, little movemnt. This minimizes dust in the finish. It would be best to get everyone out of the house for 2 days.
I have personally never used a poly (fast drying or otherwise) that would be sandable in 4 hours. If it were me I would coordinate the project to be done in one shot. You would be talking 2 days. Say on a weekend that would be first coat Sat morning, sand and second Sat night, sand and third Sunday morning for traffic on Monday. Could push it up by Starting Friday a.m. which would allow for traffic on Sunday evening.
If you really dont feel you can coat it all in one shot you can allways break the rooms on the left and right of the hall on a joint but for something this size I would just try to tough it out and get it done in the two days.
Thanks for the suggestions. Climbing though the bathroom windows is really not a option. A weekend vacation for the wife and kids might work. It might end up being cheaper to hire a pro.
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