Hardwood Floors in Lexington MA

Plan on $4 to $5.50 per square foot for sanding and finishing, which puts the 1,000 to 1,200 square feet of oak on the main floor of a 1950s Lexington Cape at roughly $4,000 to $6,600 before any stain. Most single-floor jobs in town land between $1,500 and $6,500, and a whole house runs $6,000 to $12,000 and up. The narrow stair to a finished Cape attic is hand work with an edger and adds hours, so it is priced separately on the estimator.

Lexington loses about 75 houses a year to teardowns, and a buyer who plans to rebuild has no reason to pay for a full sand. If the house is on the Historical Commission's inventory, the demolition delay bylaw imposes a wait of up to 21 months (12 with an approved multifamily site plan), which is long enough that a screen and recoat with Bona Traffic HD makes the floor livable for the interim at a fraction of the cost. Owners staying put should refinish; owners selling to a builder generally should not.

Only if it sits on the pavement. A container in your own driveway needs nothing from the town, while one on the street or the town right-of-way takes a DPW permit that costs $50 and runs three to five business days to process, so it has to be filed before demolition day. Inside the Battle Green, Hancock-Clarke, East Village or Munroe Tavern districts the Historic Districts Commission may want a say on placement. Refinishing alone rarely needs a container, because the HEPA vacuums bag the dust and the old finish leaves with it.

Ask the developer for the wear layer thickness in writing. The buildings coming out of Lexington's 2023 MBTA Communities rezoning, from the 32 units at 89 Bedford Street to the 312 planned at 17 Hartwell Avenue, are multifamily construction where the floor is usually engineered, and an engineered board with less than about 3/32 of an inch of hardwood above the tongue cannot take a full sand later, only a buff and recoat. Get the association's acoustic underlayment requirement at the same time, before you ever replace a board.

Some movement is built in. A heated New England house sits around 50 to 60 percent indoor humidity in August and drops to 20 to 30 percent once the heat is on, and a radiant slab under a Six Moon Hill or Peacock Farm lower level pushes the boards drier still, so hairline gaps open around February and close again by June. Engineered white oak moves less than solid strip over a warm slab, and a whole-house humidifier running through the heating season keeps the winter gap from widening in either.

Two to four for a standard sand, up to five with the Lagler Trio. A belt sander, edger and buffer need 21 to 33 machine hours per 1,000 square feet, and the Trio pass for a furniture-grade surface pushes that to 31 to 46 hours, all inside the weekday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday 9 to 5 window the town allows for contractor equipment. Water-based coats dry in one to two hours, so two go on in a day, and furniture returns three days after the last coat of Bona Traffic HD.