Large-format porcelain tile with a white marble look going down in a Cabbagetown home. Each tile was bedded into fresh thinset and placed against its neighbour, with spacers keeping the grout joints even across the floor.
These houses have had a long time to accumulate previous owners, and most of those owners refinished the floors. A solid 3/4 inch hardwood floor has roughly three to five sandings in it across its whole life, so a Cabbagetown floor may well be on its last one, or past it. Sanding a floor with no thickness left above the tongue exposes the nails and the tongue itself, and there is no going back from that. The check costs nothing: lift a threshold or pull a floor vent and look at the edge of a board. Where the answer is no, board replacement or a new floor over an overlay is the honest recommendation rather than a sand that ruins what is there.
A board edge inspected before anything is promised about sanding.
Narrow treads and high risers, hand sanded at $80 to $200 per step.
Matched boards cut in where the floor is worth keeping but damaged.
Three to five is the lifetime total for a solid floor. Many here are close to it.
The only reliable indicator, and it takes one look at a board edge to see.
Victorian staircases here are steep with narrow treads and often a winder at the turn, which is hand work throughout.
Frequently under the 19 mm we want for nail-down hardwood, so new hardwood needs an overlay first.
These are narrow houses with one staircase, which means the work and the household share the same route. The practical answer is sequencing rather than moving out. Coating a flight so half of it stays walkable, working room by room rather than floor by floor, and planning the one overnight window where a wet finish genuinely blocks a route. It takes longer overall than an empty house and it is usually preferable to the alternative.
Reviews collected directly from clients.
The team refinished our existing hardwood floors and brought them back to life. The colour looks great, and the final finish is smooth and consistent.
We had several damaged floorboards that needed repair. The team matched the new boards closely with the existing flooring and completed the work with excellent attention to detail.
Look at a board edge where you can see it – a threshold, a floor vent, the top of a stair. If the wood above the tongue is thin, or if you can see nail heads sitting close to the surface anywhere in the floor, it has had what it has to give.
Replacing the worst boards and living with a mixed floor, laying a new floor over an overlay, or a screen and recoat, which refreshes the finish without removing wood. The last one changes nothing about colour or deep scratches but it buys years.
Usually toward the upper end of the $80 to $200 per step range. Steep flights with narrow treads, winders at the turn and balusters to work around are all hand work, and there is more of it per step than in a modern staircase.