Hardwood Floors in Braintree, MA

Braintree Gardens, 60 units built in 1970, and the Sunset Lake condominiums from the same decade are typical of the town's first wave of condos, and many Sunset Lake units still run on electric heat. Electric baseboard heat pushes winter indoor humidity to the dry end of the 20 to 30 percent range, which means wider seasonal gaps in solid oak than a house with a humidified furnace sees. In those units a narrower board or an engineered plank, over the sound-rated underlayment the association will require under Chapter 183A, makes the steadier floor.

Because of what is under it. Twenty-seven percent of Braintree's housing was built before 1939, and those houses have board subfloors laid diagonally or straight across the joists, often cupped and gapped after a century. Flattening them or adding a plywood overlay adds $2 to $10 per square foot, or $900 to $3,000 for a whole floor, on top of the $10 to $22 per square foot the hardwood itself costs supplied and installed. In a postwar house with a sound plywood deck that line is often close to zero.

Around 900 square feet of Cape first floor comes to $3,600 to $4,950 at $4 to $5.50 per square foot, inside the $1,500 to $6,500 band that covers most single-floor jobs. Capes in East Braintree and South Braintree from the 1940s and 1950s tend to have the oak stop at the kitchen doorway, so measure only the rooms that actually have wood. Stain adds 3 to 5 working hours per 1,000 square feet; a natural finish skips that step entirely.

Somewhere between 1/8 and 3/16 of an inch above the tongue, if it started as 3/4-inch strip with the standard quarter inch and each full sand took 1/32 to 1/16. That leaves room for one, possibly two, more refinishes before the 3/32-inch point where nail heads start to surface. With 54 percent of Braintree's houses built before 1960, floors on their third owner have often used those passes already, so the remaining depth is measured at a threshold or register during the estimate rather than guessed.

Water that reaches the subfloor from below produces buckling, boards lifting off their fasteners, or cupping if the soaking was slower. The first move is drying, not sanding: fans and dehumidifiers for weeks until moisture meter readings on the subfloor and the boards settle, because a floor sanded flat while still swollen will crown later. Cupped boards that dry back to within a few percent of the rest can often be saved; buckled runs are cut out and replaced. The water damage repair page covers the sequence.

They can, but they are a separate line on the estimate. No belt sander fits a stair run, so each tread is worked with an American Sanders edger at 24 or 36 grit and finished with a palm sander and a hand scraper in the corners, which is why stair work is measured in hours rather than square feet. In a South Braintree colonial built before 1978 the painted risers deserve a question about lead paint before anyone sands them. Treads take the same Bona finish as the floor so the sheen matches.