Hardwood Floor Installation & Refinishing in Nashua, NH

About $4,000 to $5,500 per unit before stain, at $4 to $5.50 per square foot. The two- and three-family houses that fill French Hill and the Tree Streets were built with one apartment per level, so each unit is its own single-floor job in the $1,500 to $6,500 range, and an owner doing the whole building should expect $6,000 to $12,000 and up. Stain adds 3 to 5 working hours per 1,000 square feet; the shared stair hall, sanded tread by tread with an edger, is the other line that appears on a Nashua multi-family estimate.

Ten to twenty-two dollars per square foot installed, so a 1,000-square-foot floor is $10,000 to $22,000 and 2,000 square feet is $20,000 to $44,000. Labor alone is $3 to $10 per square foot, straight-lay at $3 to $8 and herringbone, chevron or parquet at $8 to $10 and above. Nashua's age split matters here: about one house in five was built before 1940, and a French Hill Victorian or a pre-1900 house in the Tree Streets tends to need $2 to $10 per square foot of subfloor work before the first board goes down, while a 1970s colonial in one of the postwar subdivisions usually does not.

Until 7pm. Nashua's noise ordinance bars construction work in residential zones, or within 600 feet of any dwelling, between 8pm and 7am from Sunday through Friday and from 7pm Saturday until 8am Sunday and on holidays, so a Saturday sanding day in French Hill or Crown Hill runs 7am to 7pm and a Sunday cannot start before 8. A Lagler Hummel belt sander and an edger are loud enough that those hours are the practical limit as well as the legal one on the tight lots of the Tree Streets. Machine work on weekdays and the quiet coating days on the weekend keeps a project inside them.

Some do and some do not, and measuring is the only honest way to know. A ¾-inch strip floor starts with about ¼ inch of wood above the tongue and gives up 1/32 to 1/16 inch to every full sand; once less than roughly 3/32 inch remains, another pass risks exposing nail heads. The Tree Streets hold Nashua's oldest and densest housing, small houses and two- and three-family buildings mostly built before 1900 and mostly rented, and floors that have carried a century of tenants and several refinishes are often at that line. Then the answer is replacing the thinnest boards or a screen and recoat, not a full sand.

A water-based system, and Bona Traffic HD is the longest-wearing of them. It dries in one to two hours per coat, takes furniture back three days after the final coat, and at 150 g/L VOC lets the occupant stay in the apartment; Bona Mega ONE is the one-component alternative at 200 g/L and five days to furniture. Oil-based Bona Woodline, at 700 g/L and 14 days to full cure, requires the unit to be empty during coating, which in a fully rented Tree Streets three-family means a vacancy nobody wants. Neither water-based finish ambers, so a unit refinished now will match the one done at the next turnover.

The contractor, under federal rules. About 19 to 20 percent of Nashua's housing was built before 1940, concentrated in French Hill, Crown Hill and the Tree Streets, and any of it may carry lead paint on the baseboards, thresholds and stair risers that the edger and hand scrapers disturb even though the floor itself is bare wood. The EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule requires a certified firm and a certified renovator once more than six square feet of interior painted surface is disturbed, and New Hampshire applies that federal standard. Ask for the firm's certificate number in writing; separately, the city's Lead Paint & Healthy Homes Program funds hazard removal for income-eligible households.