Hardwood Floors in Natick MA

Refinishing costs $4 to $5.50 per square foot, so 1,000 square feet of a Walnut Hill house is about $4,000 to $5,500 before stain, and a whole house runs $6,000 to $12,000 and up. The stair run to the second floor adds labor because every tread is worked by hand with an edger and a palm sander. Staining, if the floor is going darker to suit the original woodwork, adds 3 to 5 working hours per 1,000 square feet and is priced as its own line.

Because the boards under the boards are often the problem. Houses from before 1950 in Natick Center and South Natick usually sit on diagonal plank subfloors that have cupped or loosened, and flattening or overlaying them adds $2 to $10 per square foot, or $900 to $3,000 for a whole floor. The flooring itself is $10 to $22 per square foot supplied and installed, with labor at $3 to $10 of that, so 1,000 square feet lands between $10,000 and $22,000 before any subfloor work.

Strictly, the bylaw covers work that needs a building permit, and it sets 7am to 7:30pm on weekdays and 8am to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays, with anything outside those windows needing a Planning Board finding. Refinishing an existing floor ordinarily does not require a permit, but we keep to those hours anyway because a belt sander is audible through a closed window. At 21 to 33 hours per 1,000 square feet that is three to four crew days, and the weekend hours mean a job can run straight through Saturday and Sunday.

Only if there is enough wood on top. Modera Natick Center's 150 units went up in 2015 beside the commuter rail station, and the buildings at 45 East Central Street, Union Street and Washington Street follow it; multi-unit construction of that kind is usually floored with engineered planks whose real-wood layer is a few millimeters thick, not 3/4-inch solid. A 2 mm veneer takes a screen and recoat but not a full sand; a 4 mm or thicker wear layer can take one careful pass. We check the thickness at an exposed edge first.

Closely, if the width and species match first. Most postwar strip in Wethersfield and West Natick is 2¼-inch red oak, and new select-and-better red oak of the same width, woven into the old boards rather than butted at a straight line, disappears once the whole area is sanded together. Color is handled at the finish stage: Bona DriFast comes in 24 inter-mixable colors and the water-based sealers in five, so the sun-darkened original wood and the new boards end under the same tone. Doorway transitions are where an unmatched addition shows first.