Re-sealing prefinished wood flooring?

15 years ago

Hi,

My husband and I are going to be installing prefinished maple in most of our new house...everywhere except the bathrooms. I'm wondering about in the kitchen though, and the chance of water spills getting inbetween the boards. Does it work to, after you have installed the prefinished flooring, to add another layer of sealer/polyurethane/waterlox, something, to seal those cracks? Would you need to sand first? Our flooring is "hand scraped", and so sanding first would pretty much get rid of that look, which I'm reluctant to do.

Any ideas for me?

Thanks!

Carrie

Featured Answer

Nunya Biness

4 years ago

last modified: 4 years ago

Thankyou for your comment, sj. I have seen lots of people on the web with the same question I had, how can I seal prefinished hardwood floors. And all the responses are invariably, either 1. Why would you want to Seal it, don’t do it. 2. Just clean up any spills immediately. Or 3. Install a different type of flooring.

there are many good reasons for wanting to seal a prefinished hardwood floor. Especially if you have kids and or pets. Maybe you bought a house with the floors already and now you want to seal them. Maybe you installed the floor before you had wet puddle makers. Maybe your significant other likes the glassy look of uv cured 7 layer factory finished floors. Maybe you like how durable the finish is.

Small Kids and any size pets usually don’t tell you when they’ve left a puddle of pee, poop, vomit, orange Juice, and or a pile of quickly melting Ben and Jerry’s cherry garcia ice cream.

Nope, you just have to stumble upon it. At which point it has already soaked to the bottom of the board, possibly the subfloor depending on whether you Put a barrier of some sort. And unless you have a way of getting the urine smell out of the space between your boards, or you enjoy scraping poop and vomit out of the larger gaps with an old toothbrush, you are going to want to seal it.

yes it does add significant time to your installation, probably 5-10% of the time you spent on the whole installation. Which is significant, cost wise maybe 1% of the total cost, so pretty much negligible. Time wise you will regain a lot of that by the reduction in the amount of time you spend cleaning.

im glad you brought that up, so I could get that chip off my shoulder! Aloha!

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Comments (10)

boxers
15 years ago
adding finish does nothing to protect moisture from between boards. Flooring expands and contracts and gaps will occur between seasons. This is normal. There is no miracle product that will give you a seamless floor. You'd have to have a substantial 'leak' to do long term damage and if that were to happen you just need to replace the board or two that was damaged.
bigdoglover
15 years ago
Boxers, Would it work, for extra protection, to take the pieces that will be around the wet areas and finish all their raw edges with wax, tung oil, polyurethane, or such, before installing them?

Evamommy, In my two kitchens with hardwood, the problem was not so much getting between the cracks but sitting on the finish. Family members who don't wipe up splashes, dogs drinking water, etc. After ten years we had a couple of these boards replaced, as boxers says, and it was fine. The finish of the new board was brand new and that fact did show up in the color of the wood and the fact of a brand new vs. a ten year old finish, but that didn't bother me, after all this is wood, a natural product. Finally, when it got too bad, we just had someone come over and distress it, and the distressing covered the bad spots. It was engineered with nothing really to re-sand so he did not strip it down, he just put a coat of stain over it, and a couple coats of poly over that. Then we sold the house and moved!
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glennsfc
15 years ago
Kahrs, one manufacturer of prefinished hardwood, did recommend adding a coat of finish to seal the edges of water sensitive species after the installation was complete. I did that a few times.

Coating these new factory applied finishes requires special preparation with the correct chemicals and synthetic abrasive pads and then the application of a finish that will bond to the factory coat.

Probably best to just not let water spills and events sit on the flooring for a long length of time.
boxers
15 years ago
I would trust Glens recommendations. I've worked for Bruce, Hartco and Robbins so was sort of indoctrinated by the factory finish guys. There just is a lot of misinformation out there on flooring.
glennsfc
15 years ago
What Boxers says is also true. Wood does expand and contract and that is why sealing only works "to a certain point"...and shouldn't be relied upon as a cure-all to the fact that any wood floor has hundreds of seams, any one of which can allow water to seep down between the boards.

Boxers gives good advice and I value his comments. I don't want anyone, especially Boxers, to think I meant any disrespect.
dstp1_telus_net
15 years ago
Is there any reason I can't use prefinished hardwood on a covered porch (outside)? I can get this for a fraction of the cost of the T&G pine that they normally use. Any thoughts?
Nunya Biness
4 years ago
I sealed my prefinished floors. Here’s a link for prefinished hardwood floors check out what I did here https://youtu.be/M67ZF2exWQc
SJ McCarthy
4 years ago
If you are going to all that trouble to use filler in every single bevel between each and every plank on your floor (?thousands of bevels to fill?) you might as well go with site finished flooring rather than factory finished floors with the beveled edge.

But then again I'm lazy...and would never have the need to "seal" the edges of a wood floor. If I had that need, I would probably work with tile.
Nunya Biness
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
Did anyone notice my tile to wood transitions?