Mr. Reno v. Mrs. Reno: To Sand or Not to Sand

Carpeted or Wood Floors?

Earlier this year, Mrs. Renovation and I faced a dilemma: should we take up the carpet in one of our rentals or should we leave it? (The carpet was installed shortly before we bought the house.) We weighed the costs: leaving the carpet would be free, while taking it up and refinishing the floors would cost us about about $1000. You know I wanted to take the cheap route, but Mrs. Reno knew better.

Like all married couples, Mrs. Reno and I went back and forth for several weeks about the carpet. Mrs. Reno argued that no one in New York liked wall to wall carpet and wanted to remove it. I thought the floors were too damaged to fix. Several openhouses later, it became clear to me that she was right: the carpeted floor was turning off potential tenants. So Mrs. Reno called our floor guy, M., to check out the floors. Four days later, he was done. The finished floors are below. We found tenants a week later. The moral of this story: listen to your wife. (Sometimes)

Work done:

1. Carpet removed.
2. Nails and staples removed.
3. Missing pieces of the wood flooring patched. (There was an extremely damaged area)
4. Floors sanded several times to remove layers of paint and gook. (This took two days)
5. Three coats polyurethane added.

The results.