Last week Sherry and I saw the freshly refinished floors at the duplex for the first time. Even though we went through a similar process at the pink beach house last year, we were still surprised by how dramatically the refinished floors transform a space. One surface can take a room from “construction zone” to “move-in ready,” so here are the best before-and-after moments from the job.
The difference is remarkable. That smooth, sealed surface makes the whole house feel complete and intentional. For perspective, here’s the same living room on the left side of the duplex when we bought the house last September. You can see old carpet padding glued to the floor in places — it was a mess.
This was the room when we bought it last fall.
By May, during reconstruction, the floors actually looked worse because dust and work traffic had taken their toll. Everyone expected a full sanding and refinish, so the floors weren’t being protected during demolition and framing.
Even after drywall went in, the place still looked rough—especially the floors. Walking in now and seeing the sealed oak underfoot feels like a major milestone. We still need to add quarter round trim along baseboards, but the visual change is huge.
To show the impact more clearly, here’s a before photo next to the finished view. We also widened the opening to the kitchen and added an interior transom window above it, which opened up sightlines and light.
Repairing and patching the worst areas required more than our DIY skills, so we hired ShenValley Floors, the same crew that helped with the pink house. They handle sanding, staining, sealing, and also source and install reclaimed hardwood when needed. The duplex had several spots with rot and deep water damage that needed full replacement rather than a simple patch.
One large problem was rot from a long-ago leaking pipe in what used to be an upstairs bathroom. The water had eaten through both the original pine subfloor and the newer oak layer on top. Because the oak had been glued down over time and the lower layer was too damaged to salvage, the team had to remove and replace multiple boards and blend in new reclaimed oak where necessary.
You can see both layers of flooring in the shot below. In places where the floor plan changed, gaps had been created. To achieve a seamless finish, ShenValley brought in 100‑year‑old reclaimed oak to match the existing boards and fill those gaps.
After patching, sanding, staining, and sealing, the repaired areas blend in nicely with the rest of the floor. The crew avoids simple straight-line repairs; instead they pry up surrounding boards and stagger the replacements so transitions are invisible once finished.
This is the patched area after finishing work — sanded, stained, and sealed.
The more involved repair technique takes extra time, but the result is worth it. If you want a deeper look at the refinishing steps, we documented a similar process at our own house previously.
Midway through the refinish we hit a curveball. The plan was to clear-seal the oak so the natural color would show, but after sanding the crew discovered deep, blotchy stains that couldn’t be sanded out. They also found the previous installer had used two species of oak in different areas — both white and red oak — which created noticeable color variation once the surface was exposed.
The refinisher recommended a medium stain to help unify the floor and minimize the contrast from the stains and the two oak species. We chose Special Walnut, and it did a great job evening out the color. In the places where the species change is visible, it’s subtle in person and will be even less noticeable once rugs and furniture are in place.
Looking back at older photos, you can spot some of the color variation that went unnoticed until the floors were sanded. Part of that upstairs floor had also been painted and covered with sticky tiles previously, so multiple factors contributed to the uneven appearance.
Choosing a stain felt like a small compromise compared with the overall improvement. The upstairs hallway today looks refreshed and consistent, and the sticky tiles that used to make the front bedroom feel like “walking on flypaper” are gone.
Here’s the stairwell area as it looked when we bought the house:
And here it is now. We still need to paint the stair sides and clean up a bit of dust near the door frame, but the transformation is undeniable.
We dug up old photos of the back bedroom and first had trouble recognizing the space because of the carpet and dark walls that used to be there. The after photos show how much brighter and cleaner the rooms feel with the refinished floors.
There are plenty more photos I could share, but I’ll stop for now since the next big milestones are installing the kitchens this weekend and moving furniture in over the holiday break. To close, here’s another before-and-after of the living room, this time from the opposite side:
Interestingly, this spot didn’t need as much repair, so it didn’t show as dramatic a change. Still, the refinished floors tie the whole space together and give the house a cohesive, finished look. We’ll leave the trim colors classic for now—no bright blues or greens on our baseboards—just the warm, unified tone of the new finish.
More Hardwood Floor Refinishing Projects
If you want to read more about our hardwood refinishing work, check these posts where we share different challenges and solutions, from matching new and old boards to restoring century-old pine floors:
- Refinishing Mid-Century Oak Floors in our first house
- Matching New & Old Hardwood Floors in our third house
- Refinishing Historic Heart Pine Floors in our beach house
- Clear Sealing Our Refinished Floors in our Florida house
P.S. For a full list of our duplex updates and all posts about the pink beach house, see the categories on our site.