Hardwood Floor Restoration in Westport
Restoration goes beyond regular refinishing. It’s for floors that need serious help – the ones with deep damage, water issues, or years of neglect. In Westport’s older homes, we see plenty of floors that need this level of care.
Unlike basic hardwood floor refinishing, restoration often involves fixing structural issues first. We might replace damaged boards, stabilize loose sections, or address squeaks and movement before the cosmetic work begins.
Our wood floor refinishing service includes full restoration capabilities for even severely damaged floors. When Westport homeowners call thinking they need complete replacement, we can often save their original floors through proper restoration techniques.
Each restoration job is unique. Some historic homes in Green’s Farms need careful preservation of original character, while newer properties might need repairs after water damage from coastal storms. We approach each project with methods tailored to the specific damage and floor type.
Signs Your Floors Need Restoration
Regular refinishing isn’t enough when you’ve got these problems:
- Cupping or crowning (boards that aren’t flat) usually means moisture issues underneath. Common after flooding or long-term leaks, especially in homes near the Saugatuck River.
- Loose, bouncy, or squeaky sections tell you something’s wrong with the subfloor or joists. We fix the structure before touching the surface.
- Severe gaps between boards that change with seasons often mean the floor’s lost its proper connection to the subfloor. Not just an appearance issue – it affects how your floor feels underfoot.
- Black staining between boards or around the edges typically means water damage that’s penetrated deep. These won’t come out with regular hardwood floor staining – they need specialized treatments.
Pet urine that’s soaked in for years sometimes requires board replacement before restoration. The ammonia damages wood fibers in ways that can’t always be sanded out.
Our Restoration Techniques for Damaged Floors
Restoring badly damaged floors takes different approaches depending on what we find:
- For water-damaged areas, we first fix the source of moisture, then replace only the boards that can’t be saved. The trick is matching new wood with old – sometimes we’ll source reclaimed materials from salvage yards to match historic floors.
- With cupped floors, we stabilize the moisture level first, then plane or sand the floor flat. Takes more passes than regular sanding but saves the original wood.
- For structural issues, we access the floor from underneath when possible, reinforcing joists and re-securing floorboards to eliminate movement.
- Deep stains often respond to specialized bleaching compounds that target specific types of damage. After neutralizing, we can apply custom stain colors to blend restored areas with the rest of your floor.
For floors with failing finishes, we strip everything down to bare wood before applying new water-based & oil-based finishes.
Types of Floors We Can Restore
Most floors can be saved, but each type needs different restoration approaches.
Original oak floors in Westport’s historic homes respond well to restoration. We’ve brought back floors from the early 1900s that still had decades of life left in them. The wood from that era tends to be denser and more stable.
Maple, which is common in older kitchens around town, typically needs specialized sanding techniques due to its hardness. Burns marks from dropped pots often sand out better than you’d expect.
Pine floors in colonial-era homes require careful handling. The softer wood dents easily, but those character marks can actually enhance the historic feel while we fix the structural issues.
We also handle hardwood stairs refinishing as part of whole-house restorations. Stair treads often show the worst wear but can usually be restored rather than replaced.
Engineered floors with thick wear layers can sometimes be restored, though options are more limited.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What’s the difference between floor restoration and refinishing, and which do my floors need?
Refinishing is sanding down the existing finish and applying new stain and coating. Restoration includes refinishing along with repairing or replacing damaged boards, correcting structural issues, addressing water damage, and, in some cases, rebuilding affected sections. After 40+ years working on Westport homes, we assess what your floors actually need rather than automatically doing the most expensive option. Many older homes here just need refinishing. Others have real problems that won’t be solved by sanding alone. We look at the whole situation and tell you honestly what makes sense.
2. Can you restore floors that have water damage or severe cupping and warping?
It depends on how deep the damage goes and whether the subfloor is compromised. We’ve successfully restored badly damaged floors throughout Westport, but sometimes boards are too far gone and need replacing, or the subfloor underneath has rot that must be addressed first. Our 40+ years of diagnosing these problems means we can tell you what’s fixable and what isn’t before starting work. If restoration won’t give you a floor that performs properly long-term, we’ll say so rather than take your money for a temporary fix.