Hardwood Floors in Allston, MA

No, the arithmetic does not allow it. Sanding a 1,000-square-foot floor-through takes 21 to 33 working hours before the first coat, and even the fastest water-based system needs its coats spaced one to two hours apart and three days before furniture comes back. Because roughly two-thirds of Boston's leases turn over on September 1, most of them in Allston and Brighton, the realistic window is a vacancy in June or July, or a lease that starts mid-month. If the floor only needs to look clean for showings, a one-day screen and recoat is the honest alternative.

For a van, usually not; for reserved curb space or a dumpster, yes. Boston sells a one-day, two-space no-parking permit through the Parking Clerk, the same one movers use, and on the streets off Brighton Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue those two spaces are what let a plank delivery happen without double parking. On resident-permit blocks the crew parks legally where it can and carries hoses and machines the rest of the way. Late August is the one week to avoid, when every moving truck in the neighborhood is after the same curb.

Between $4,000 and $5,500 before stain, at $4 to $5.50 per square foot, and most single-floor jobs across the neighborhood settle somewhere in the $1,500 to $6,500 band depending on closets, stairs and repairs. A floor-through in a converted triple-decker off Brighton Avenue usually has one run of stairs inside the unit, and every tread is sanded by hand with an edger and palm sander, which is where a quote moves. Whole-house work on a Lower Allston two-family runs $6,000 to $12,000 and up. The estimator turns your measurements into a written number.

Bona Traffic HD, in satin. It is the most durable water-based finish on the market, a two-component coating that takes furniture three days after the last coat and does not yellow, so the floor a landlord refinishes for a four-bedroom rental looks the same at the next turnover. Satin hides the scuffs that gloss advertises, which matters when the same hallway between four bedrooms is walked all year. Between full refinishes, a screen and one fresh coat of the same product renews the wear surface without sanding into the wood. Ask for the product name on the estimate, because a generic water-based poly can mean anything.

Measure before assuming either way. Strip flooring of that era began with roughly 1/4 inch of wood above the tongue, each full sanding removes 1/32 to 1/16 inch, and once the wood above the tongue falls under about 3/32 inch the next pass starts hitting nails. A triple-decker off Brighton Avenue that has been rented for a century has often been sanded twice, sometimes three times, so we check depth at a threshold or a register opening at the estimate. If the answer is no, the floor is repaired board by board or screened and recoated rather than cut again. See repair and restoration.