Knowing when to refinish hardwood floors is not as simple as it seems. Understanding at what point wooden floors should be refinished is like a fine wine; hardwood does indeed get better with age – up to a certain point. Eventually, even the best wines sour and wood loses its luster.

This article gives you a few ideas on what to consider before simply renting a sander.

Naturally, professional flooring contractors can be expensive, but if you plan on doing a refinish yourself, it is inevitable that you understand just how big of a project you are undertaking. Also, you really need to know what you are doing. Firstly, you should clear out all furniture and divert any foot traffic across the flooring in question. Dust will get everywhere and the chemicals from the sealer, stain and polyurethane will stink. Moreover, you might not even need to do it all.

It is possible that you can unnecessarily doing more harm than good when refinishing a wooden floor. This, of course, all depends on the condition of the floor. For example, you can sand away beautiful grain patterns that took years to develop. Often, less expensive and intrusive alternatives may work out better.

Before going ahead and doing anything, take a close look at your floor. If all you find is a faded finish and light surface scratches, you are in luck – you can probably get by with screening (a method for roughing up the existing finish) the floor, and then applying a finish. There are affordable products available which can help clean and fill in small scratches to restore floors to all their glory.

However, if you see the opposite and find the damage goes beyond minor wear, such as warped, sagging or split boards throughout the floor, extensive water damage or extensive deep scratches into the wood, better options are out there. For instance, it might be better to completely replace or cover the damaged flooring if it is beyond repair. In those cases where damage control is limited to replacing just a few boards and where the finish has been off so long that grime has ground into the wood, your floors may indeed be best suited to refinishing. Remember: when in doubt, get a professional opinion.

Another consideration to take is to find out if you have engineered or laminated flooring rather than solid hardwood planks. This heavily impacts on the refinish you need.

Engineered wood flooring comprises layers of wood glued together, like plywood. The upper layer is a thin (typically 1/16- to 1/8-inch thick) strip of finished hardwood that can withstand being sanded no more than a couple of times. Because of this low margin for error, you should consider professional help for engineered floors. Additionally, engineered flooring does not have the durability of solid flooring.

Laminated floors are not actually wood whatsoever, but are a synthetic product that never needs refinishing. The best way to tell what kind of flooring you have is by looking at the edge of exposed flooring, such as under heating vents.