Refinishing hardwood floors is really hard if you’re going to do it correctly. It’s far more complicated than running a vacuum cleaner and just moving your furniture around. That’s because refinishing wood floors creates an incredible amount of fine dust (see below) that gets into everything nearby.

Depending on the condition of a wood floor, repairs and even replacing wood may be required. The beautiful living room floor at right needed extensive work on stains when the elderly couple moved to a nursing home. Replacing just a few pieces of flooring is a challenge, especially when you’ve got to find the right stain to match the look and feel of the wood next to it.

Most people know that open doorways get plastic to minimize dust traveling to other parts of the house. These photos show how you can wrap the rooms, from ceiling to floor including built-in furniture, to avoid a serious cleaning job when done.

Steps to Refinishing Wood Floors

1. Step 1: Moving the furniture
2. Step 2: Wrapping fixtures, walls/doors and open doorways with plastic to avoid wood dust (this article).
3. Step 3: Skilled sanding to remove enough, but not too much of the wood.
4. Step 4: Now it’s time to apply multiple coats of polyurethane to the floors, and some floors require staining first.
5. Step 5: Cleaning up and putting furniture back (we think you get this one without photos).

Author: tinagleisner: Tina Gleisner is passionate about helping women home owners LEARN about their homes, CONNECT with home professionals committed to delivering quality home products, and CREATE homes that support their lifestyle. Leveraging her experience as the owner of a handyman business, Tina created the Assn of Women Home Owners at www.HomeTips4Women.com.