Restoring Oak Floors Berkswell Coventry

Restoring oak floors is always rewarding. However, when it is a project such as this, it really does prove to be so fulfilling. This property was originally built in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s in Berkswell, Coventry. It is a large property, originally comprised of a row of small cottages, now joined.

The owners of the property inherited the oak floors. They love the idea of having a real wood floor throughout. However, they did not like the terrible orange colour of their oak floor. Our client referred to it as her ‘horrible ginger floor’. During the survey we could see that a DIY floor sanding had been attempted. Unfortunately, this was an awful attempt. In all my years of floor sanding, I have never seen so many drum marks and deep groves in a floor. The wood finish was uneven and really tired looking. The floor lacked any lustre and simply looked tired and worn out.

Floor sanding was needed in the following five areas:

• The lounge / dining room
• Their second sitting room
• The dogs room / garden room
• Their main office
• The hallway

The Lounge / dining room needed a number of repairs before we could start sanding. The floor had buckled and moved and seemed to be affected by the newly installed wood burning stove. We scheduled an afternoon visit before we were due to commence sanding so that Wes could set to work securing the boards after testing for moisture and testing the subfloor.

We returned a week later to actually get on with restoring oak floors. The first floor we tackled was the second sitting room. As we worked our way around the room it became evident just how uneven and how many drum marks there actually were in the floor. This made sanding much harder and took a little longer than at first planned. However, a good way into the first day and the horrible old finish was completely removed, and the floor was level.

We moved onto the office. The office floor was very worn had what appeared water damage, stains and what looked like an ink spill. We worked hard to remove the staining. We were surprised to even manage to get the ink stain out of the floor. Some areas of this floor had to be sanded by hand. This was due to the fact that the desks were fixed to the wall. The larger machines just didn’t fit into such a tight area. This was not a problem though and we still managed to remove all the drum marks and achieve a smooth even finish.

The hall was the easiest room in the house a nice small area that didn’t take too long to get level and up to a smooth finish ready for lacquering.

The next day we turned our attention to the main room the really large lounge/ dining room. This room also had an awful lot of drum marks, swirls and deep grooves and creases from DIY sanding. These appeared all along the front of the walk-in fireplace. We set to work levelling the floor and then worked our way through the grades to remove all of the old finish level the floor and prepare it for the new finish.

Last but not least the worst floor was the dog’s room. We saved this until last on day two, the floor was uneven but had suffered the most wear from water bowls and most likely playing fetch.  Ollie is a stunning black Labrador. We set to work to make his room just as amazing as the other rooms. A couple of hours later and Ollie’s room was ready too.

All of the floors were finished using 3 coats of quality Lacquer. This achieves a naturally beautiful look that brings out both the colour and the grain in the wood. It is hardwearing and durable at the same time. This is an example of how restoring oak floors really does transform a home!

The couple were very happy with the results of the floor restoration. Here is the review from the family after the job was completed.

Wes and Lorraine worked wonders to transform our tired looking oak floors and restore them to as good as, if not better than, new. What they achieved far exceeded our expectations. Not only an excellent job but great people to deal with.

Tracy and Richard Evans