I had oak flooring installed in the bedrooms to match existing oak flooring in the hallway. And, yes, it was site-finished. They sanded the existing floor and removed some strips from the hallway where it transitioned to create a staggered pattern with the new floor.
I think it was 6.00/sqft installed with a Bona commercial quality finish. That included moving furniture. It was about 300.00 for the hallway to be sanded and finished.

Thank you, NSM! $6 seems very reasonable. Can you tell what is old/new?

No, I just looked at my floors and can't tell what's old and new. However, the old floor was in a windowless hallway, so there was no or, at most very little, discoloration, even after 20 years. It hadn't even occurred that the old floor should be sanded (nor had I thought of staggered pieces into the bedrooms), but our floor guy insisted. Always good if the person doing the work is pickier than the home owner :) We have natural finish, so no complicated stain mix was required.
BTW, I'm in a fairly pricey area (DC).
I'm very happy with the floor. The commercial-grade finish is extremely scratch proof despite dogs.In fact, I've decided to also get HW in my master BR.

You can get cheap carpet installed for around $2 a square foot, including the pad. Double that for a decent medium grade carpet. Dealing with the removal of the old wood, or the proper asbestos abatement and sanding the old wood, means that wood will be around 4x-5x as costly. You can find red oak for around $2.30 for good quality unfinished first quality oak. More for white oak. Less for lesser grades. The expense comes from the labor to match it all, and to deal with what you currently have.

If expense is a concern, I'd live with what was there until I had enough to do the job properly in the future. Or put in cheap carpet in the meantime.

NSM, thank you again. When I looked up prices on Angie's List "deals" it was $8/sq ft and that was for engineered-- I would think site finished would be more. Very good to know it is scratch resistant (several cats and kids-- and me doing the damage).

Live Wire, yes, you are right-- HW would be more costly. (I think I would not bother with asbestos abatement since the wood would be ruined no matter what; floor guy said it's OK just to get it out. Sanding sounds like a nightmare and even pointless.)

BUT, I think of HW as more of an investment, because I know our carpet will be icky fairly quickly. I have some patterned Turkish rugs that were used in high traffic areas, and even after over a decade, they look great. Can never say that about w-t-w (or not the kind I would get). However, once the HW issue gets resolved, I'd still have to buy rugs, but then I would hope to be done forever! Like you said, I'd only do it if I could afford to do it right. I expect to go back to work in about 5 years which would make this very easy to afford-- I would think the carpet would survive about that long anyway. It is good to know prices of white/red oak. Can the floor people tell what I have, or only once they sand the existing floor?

We just had our hardwood floors refinished. Now, we had a local guy do it, VERY reasonably. $2 sq. ft. Sanded and 3 coats of sealer with light buffing/sanding after the 1st and 2nd coat. The first estimate we had was 4 years ago and it was over $3,000. and that guy said I can't guarantee I can get all the marks/stains out. The guy that did ours is in business for himself, he's from Laos. So it wasn't a big company doing the work.

Our house was built in the 50's, the carpet in 2 of the bedrooms was foam backed carpet. It was stuck to the floor.

We live in a very small, rural area. The big place for us to go for flooring is Lowes or Lumber Liquidator. Our Lowes charges $6 sq. ft. Our floors looked so bad we thought we would just have new installed over top. We even had 3 ft. x 3 ft. square of slate in front of our front door. The mastic or whatever it was came right off.

I will also say, we removed all furniture, drapes, mirrors, old carpet, padding and about 2 million staples and nails ourselves. All he had to do was sand and seal.

This is one room where the carpet back stuck to the floor. I'll have to do another post to show the after, I don't know how to put more than one pic at a time in a post.

This is the same room.

You have to worry about asbestos abatement when anything is disturbed. So removing the old wood could be problematic. Just because it looks like the old black mastic with asbestos doesn't mean it is. I had some tested in my house and it was surprisingly negative, as was the old vinyl tile. Taking samples of materials from around the house and sending off to a lab is not terribly expensive and let's you know what you're dealing with and living with for peace of mind. You can google for laboratories.

Katlan, wow, wow, wow!!! That looks gorgeous. The black stuff looks exactly like what is on my floor. Would make more sense for it to be from carpeting, but the floor guy I talked to said no such thing, though I'd read it could be. Now that I know yours IS from carpeting, I feel better! Your floor looks amazing-so the stuff came up with just sanding?

Snookums, yes, I know--I have spent many creeped out nights researching this, but I think if it is sealed off and then removed with no sanding, it would not be terrible. I do want to test-- I have looked into it, but so much of what I've read said it can be a can of worms legally, for disclosures. So, not sure. I wish we could do it at home like lead (which I have tested for) but I would need a microscope and trained eye.

Thank you Anele! We actually scraped all the black stuff off ourselves using putty knives. We were pleasantly surprised how easy it came off.

Here's a pic of where we had the slate tile by the front door. It was adhered to I think cement board that was nailed to the floor.....

This is the after. The front door is at the top left of this pic......

We had site-finished white oak installed last year. The completed job was about $10/square foot. They put on 3 finish coats and did a kind of offset 4 x 4 foot design with the planks at the front door.

Also, they refinished 1 room of original red oak floor (prolly a 50-year-old floor) while they were here at about $4/foot. It looks amazing and very similar to the new white oak.

Do whatever you can to save the original hardwood, we had to remove laminate and carpet from a smoky house. We had nail down handscraped floors installed in about 1,100 sq ft and we are on a concrete slab so they had to build a subfloor. They scraped the floors and stained and sealed. They are gorgeous and our best investment. $8 sq ft.

This post was edited by BergiesGirl on Mon, Oct 7, 13 at 18:02

I would think if you see it when you remove the carpet then it likely has been disturbed by the carpet rubbing on it too and would potentially be in the air either way. I would want to test for my peace of mind.

Katlan, before my asbestos concern, I tried scraping and it would not budge! Thanks for sharing your pics-- so lovely!

Littlebug, can you tell the difference between your old and new flooring?

Bergies, I'd love to save the floor . . .need to figure out if possible and safe to do so! Yours looks great! My current HW is a similar color and I really like it!

Lyfia, knowing my paranoid self, I will probably test . . .I don't know about the carpet rubbing on it, though, to be an issue, since it isn't really coming off. If it was from a carpet, that carpet is long gone.

I found this from another thread here on GW, scroll down to snoonyb's post on "cutback" adhesive.

Here is a link that might be useful: mastic asbestos?

Thank you, NSM! I will test this afternoon!!!

Cross your fingers . . .and why did I want to live in an old house again???????????

Of course, I have no clue who came up with this test and how reliable it is. However, you could also take sample and send it to a lab for testing. Fingers crossed.

NSM, I tested and am not sure. Seems like it did not puddle--soaked right in, but only a thin layer came off (it's not as though it just all came off easily). In other words, it is thinner in those areas but not gone. Makes me very hopeful, but yes, I would want an official test done anyway.

Anele, the black tarry substance could be from the under pad of wtw. We just had all lr and dr wtw carpet ripped out to install HW. Our flooring guys said that when you shampoo your carpets it causes the under pad to deteriorate into that black, tarry mess. Now that the lr, dr, kitchen, and breakfast area is hw I want to have our 5 yr old wtw ripped out in the bedrooms and have hw installed. My house feels so much cleaner now!

Just want to mention that you should not assume engineered is cheaper - I wound up going with wide plank site finished white oak and it was much less than the (admittedly high end) engineered flooring I liked (du Chateau).

You asked "It is good to know prices of white/red oak. Can the floor people tell what I have, or only once they sand the existing floor?"

The flooring people can definitely tell which type of wood you have before sanding.

This thread is very interesting to me because I have been debating new carpet vs. new hardwood ever since I moved in 6 years ago.

Yes, I can see a slight difference in my old and new floor, where they butt up against each other. But our floor guy was so skilled that if I had wanted them to match, I think he could have done it. Even though the old is 50 years old.

One thing that is different is that the old floor has what he called decorative plugs. It looked like every 12 inches or so on every plank (staggered, of course) they drilled a perfect little 1" circle and plugged it with walnut. Then sanded and finished so it's perfectly smooth. Very unusual.

Holly, that is a definite possibility! I hope so. I would feel better!

Mayberry, that is very good to know about the cost of engineered. I am not experienced at all w/flooring costs, as you can see!

Newbuyer, OK-- that is great. What room(s) are you debating?

Littlebug, wow, what a neat detail!

If you google black stuff under carpet, you find a lot of links suggesting that it may be old carpet backing. What's underneath, i.e. what's your subfloor?

Also, if you google for images of asbestos mastic, it looks like you can see the swirly pattern of the glue and/or a tile pattern.

I had that troweled on black stuff, old undersized vinyl tiles (9" is often the one, so they say). Nothing contained asbestos.

It was, however, used in lots and lots of things! So when you are disturbing parts of a building, you never know what you are dealing with just by looking at it. It's something you really do want to know. You could be held accountable at this point anyway, since you are already aware, as far as that goes.

NSM, I don't know what's underneath. Those pics are helpful. Definitely look more like the first.

Snookums, nope, I would not be held accountable unless I test. Suspecting something is very different than actually testing and getting a positive response. When you read the disclosures form, there is NO place where you put that you "suspect" lead, asbestos, etc. From what I've tested on my own, it isn't asbestos anyway. It's sad-- from what I've read, the liability is what often keeps people from testing, because it translates into more $.

" Suspecting something is very different than actually testing and getting a positive response. "

No actually, I did a lot of reading when looking into this. I forget the wording, but just because you don't test doesn't relieve you of responsibility. You have already opened the can of worms by being aware.

Not in my state. Here, you document awareness, meaning actual knowledge (this is the language used). I can 100% state that I have no actual knowledge that my property contains unsafe levels of asbestos. This is fact and I would not be liable. If a test gives me the knowledge that it does, I am liable.

So, if I understand correctly, you have HW, sticky stuff, carpet; and these are the options after taking off the carpet:
1. Put new carpet down
2. Scrape whatever it is off and refinish the old HW floor
3. Remove old HW floor and site install new HW

What would be the impact and the cost for each option if it were asbestos/if it were not?
For instance,
1. if you knew it were asbestos, would you put a carpet on top of it? Or would you want to remove the asbestos?
2. How much work would it be to remove the stuff, sand, refinish the old HW, even if it were not asbestos? If it were asbestos?
3. If it were asbestos, could the old HW floor be easily removed without disturbing the asbestos? If yes, I'd probably do that.

Basically, if you don't mind living with asbestos but are worried about liability if it were asbestos and don't plan to remedy it, the way to go would be to just put new carpet on top and never remove it --- unless option 3 would work.

I personally would do a test and then figure out what to do.

In terms of logistics, the guys in our house did the whole 500 sqft in two days. I was amazed how little dust and smell there was.

Here is a link that might be useful: asbestos test kit with lab fee

Actually, how about eiteher skim-coating or putting underlay on the stuff?

Here is a link that might be useful: mastic/encapsulating