Refinishing Wood Floors in High Traffic Access Areas

Very often someone wants me to help them refinish an access area. Some examples of what I mean by access areas would be the front entryway, stairs, and hall;way at the top of the stairs.

I have developed a technique for putting finish on these areas while still allowing access to other rooms.

I first ran into this problem in a old house in Georgetown, Washington,DC. The customer wanted the nine by nine room at the top of the stairs refinished. The problem was that they also wanted to have access to all the bedrooms as I was refinishing it.

What I did was I sanded the entire room so that it was ready to start applying finish. I then put finish on six boards and followed the cracks between the boards and then skipped six boards. I finished the next six boards and then finished the next six boards.. I continued this process across the whole room.

I then came back each day until I had the first strips done with three coats of finish. This allowed the customer to hopscotch to the bedrooms each night during this process. Once the first strips were cone I realized that the strips that were wet would look just like the strips that were done.

I solved this problem by masking taping the finished strips and adding arrows of where to step. This allowed me to refinish the remaining strips while the customer could hopscotch to the bedrooms on the finished strips..

Because they had a two year old I took scissors and made "Pacman's out of the used edger paper to mark where to step. The two year old found this to be fun and the parents were appreciative that I made the effort to accomidate her. I soon found that the two year old was better at stepping in the right place than the adults.

I also found that the stairs were an access problem as well. There was only one stairway to the upstairs, I solved this problem fy refinishing every other step and then masking taping the finished steps when I did the alternate steps.

I have used this same process in downstairs entryways where the entry is the only access to the stairs, Sometimes the front entryway is the only access to the kitchen, living room or bathroom.

Using oil based finish makes it so that following the edges of the boards makes the seams disappear.

I have also applied this technique to six by six parquet floors. This gets pretty interesting as it is possible to change direction. I have made some very crooked access paths on parquet floors.