LESLIE: Mary in Pennsylvania is calling in with a flooring question. What can we do for you?
MARY: Yes. I’m calling because we have spruce hardwood floors in cherry. The house is like eight years old and I do have tinted windows in my morning room but, over time, the floor has begun to fade. And I want to know if there’s anything I can do to bring it back to its natural color. It still has the shine, it still has the luster, but you can tell that it’s beginning to fade.
TOM: Is it a stained floor? Is it a darker floor? A lighter floor? What color is it now?
MARY: It’s cherry and it’s like the pre-fab hardwood; so yes, it is stained and it’s cherry.
TOM: (overlapping voices) Right. Hmm. Well, nothing short of restaining it is probably going to bring it back up to the luster that you would like. Was this a prefinished product when it was first put down?
MARY: Yes.
TOM: And do you know how thick it is?
MARY: It’s three-quarters or more.
TOM: Well, then, I don’t see why you couldn’t sand it. You’re just going to have refinish the entire floor.
MARY: OK.
TOM: So there’s no easy way to add more color when you have all this UV degradation. But if it’s a full three-quarter-inch thick, then you could have it sanded. If it wasn’t a color issue, there is an easy way to refinish a hardwood floor if it’s just the sheen. But since it’s a coloring issue, then you have to go down to raw wood and restain it.
MARY: Alright. And I was hoping to avoid that because my entire first floor is the hardwood. So I’m afraid that if you do one section, you’re going to have to end up doing the entire floor.
TOM: (overlapping voices) Yeah. Yeah. You know, some prefinished floors are very, very difficult to refinish, especially if they have a joint where it’s a groove, because there’s a lot of handwork associated with that.
If it turns out that that’s the situation and you want to put a new floor down, take a look at Lumber Liquidators. They have engineered floors that could actually go down on top of that and would only add about three-eighths of an inch to the floor height. And the durability of the new, prefinished floors is far superior to what was available when that original floor was put down.
MARY: OK. And it doesn’t look like a pre-fab kind of floor?
TOM: Absolutely not. It’s gorgeous stuff. Take a look at it online at LumberLiquidators.com.
MARY: OK. Great. Alright. I appreciate it.
TOM: You’re very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
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