If you own a rental near Duke or NCCU with oak floors in it, turnover is the only time you get to touch those floors, and the window is short. The short version of my advice: walk the floor the day the tenant leaves, decide that week between a recoat and a full sand, and get on a refinisher’s calendar weeks before the lease ends. A recoat fits in a few days. A full refinish takes most of a week once you count the cure, and closer to ten days from move-out to move-in.
We do a lot of rental turns around Durham. When a landlord is putting in a brand new floor, I usually point them toward LVP or laminate, and we wrote about laminate in Durham rentals for that reason. Plenty of the older houses around East Campus already have oak, though. Trinity Park, Walltown, Old West Durham. That oak is worth keeping, and keeping it is mostly a scheduling problem.
The calendar you’re working against
A lot of leases near both campuses follow the academic year, so move-outs bunch up in May and the new leases start in June or August. Sometimes that leaves two or three weeks to clean, paint, fix whatever broke, and do the floors. Everybody else with a rental near campus is trying to fit into the same weeks.
It also lands right in our busy season. Spring is when people list houses and finish renovations, so May books up early, and we recommend calling six to eight weeks ahead for spring work. There’s more on why our calendar fills up when it does. Summer humidity can add a day to the cure between coats, too, so don’t plan the schedule down to the hour.
If you already know the move-out date in March, call in March.
Day one: walk the floor
Do it the day the keys come back, before the cleaners and before anyone starts painting. Take photos, with dates, of every room. You’ll want them for the deposit, and they help me give you a real number without guessing.
Then look at the floor in daylight and sort what you see:
- Gray, dull paths through the hallway and kitchen, where the finish is worn but you can’t see raw wood. That’s usually a recoat.
- Scratches you can catch a fingernail in, dents, or spots where the wood looks bare and dry. You’re looking at a full sand.
- Dark spots near the beds, by the back door, or wherever a pet slept. That’s often pet urine damage in hardwood, and deep stains usually mean replacing boards.
- Cupping, soft spots, or boards that move underfoot. Something else is going on, and it has to be fixed before anybody touches the finish.
A quick check for the worn spots: put a few drops of water on them. If the water beads up, there’s still finish there. If it soaks in and darkens the wood, the finish is gone in that spot.
Recoat or full sand?
| Maintenance coat (screen and recoat) | Full sand and refinish | |
|---|---|---|
| When it’s the right call | Finish is dull or gray, but no bare wood | Bare spots, deep scratches, stains, or a color change |
| Work time | About a day for most units | 3 to 5 days for a typical house |
| Before furniture goes back | A few days of cure | 3 to 4 days after the last coat |
| Cost | A fraction of a full sand | About $3 to $5 per square foot in Durham |
The recoat is the landlord’s best friend. If you get one done every turnover or every other one, before the tenants wear through to bare wood, you can put off the full sand for years. Wait too long and the cheap option is gone. Our per-square-foot refinishing prices in Durham break down the full-sand side by house size.
A turnover schedule that works
Here’s a full sand on a typical 1,000 square foot unit, working backward from a move-in date:
- Move-out day: walk-through, photos, repair list.
- Painting goes first, except baseboard touch-ups, which can wait until the floors are done.
- Sanding day: we sand to bare wood.
- Next day: fine sanding, stain if you’re using one, and the first coat.
- Next day: second coat.
- Next day: third coat in the kitchen, hallway and entry at minimum. In a rental I’d do three everywhere.
- Cure: socks only for the first 24 hours, no furniture for 3 to 4 days, no rugs for two weeks.
- Cleaners come in last, with a dry dust mop. No wet mopping on a fresh floor.
Keep the HVAC on the whole time the unit sits empty, during the job and after it. The single most common cause of summer cupping I see is a vacant house with the AC off, and a fresh finish cures better at normal indoor temperature and humidity anyway.
A recoat takes the same list down to one work day plus the cure, so four or five days from move-out to move-in is realistic.
Finish choices that make sense in a rental
Go water-based. It dries fast and barely smells, which matters a lot in a duplex where the other side is still occupied. Oil-based fills a building with fumes for days.
Pick a commercial-grade finish and get three coats. Tenants are harder on floors than owners are, and the extra coat is the cheapest protection in the whole job.
Keep the sheen low and the color in the middle. Matte or satin hides scratches and dust between tenants, and our sheen guide explains why low-sheen finishes hide wear. Skip dark stain in a rental. It shows every scratch, and if you change your mind later, you’ll find out how hard it is to undo a dark stain.
Write down the product and the sheen, and keep it with the property file. A maintenance coat has to bond to the finish that’s already there, so the next recoat goes faster when nobody has to guess what’s on the floor.
Lead paint in pre-1978 rentals
A lot of the housing near East Campus was built well before 1978. If the work disturbs painted surfaces, like painted floors, old painted borders or trim in the sanding zone, the EPA’s lead renovation rule applies, and it covers rental properties. That includes work a landlord does on their own rental. We go through it in our post on lead-safe sanding in older Durham houses. If your rental was built before 1978, ask about it before the sanders come in.
Protect the floor during the next lease
A few cheap things make the next turnover easier:
- Leave a bag of felt pads for the new tenants. It costs a few dollars and can save you a recoat.
- Put mats at every outside door. Red clay and grit on shoes wear a finish down faster than almost anything.
- Put the floor care rules in the lease: no wet mops or steam mops, and the cleaner you want them to use.
- Take the move-in photos the same way you took the move-out ones.
On deposits, I’m a floor guy and not a lawyer. Under North Carolina’s Tenant Security Deposit Act, a landlord can’t keep deposit money for normal wear and tear, can’t keep more than the actual damage, and has to itemize the damage in writing within 30 days after the tenancy ends and the unit is handed back. Finish worn thin in the hallway after a year of living is the kind of thing that usually counts as normal wear. A tenant’s dog soaking a bedroom floor is a different conversation. Talk to your property manager or an attorney before you deduct anything.
When it’s time to stop refinishing
Some rental floors have been sanded so many times there’s nothing left, or the pet damage covers half the unit. At that point vinyl is often the smarter call for a rental, and here’s when covering old oak with LVP makes sense. Float it, so the oak is still there if you ever sell.
Whoever you hire, ask for proof of license and insurance before they start. It’s your property, and you want to know who pays if something goes wrong on the job.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to refinish hardwood floors between tenants?
A maintenance coat is about a day of work plus a few days of cure, so four or five days from move-out to move-in. A full sand takes 3 to 5 days of work and then 3 to 4 days before furniture can go back, so plan on about ten days.
Can a landlord charge a tenant for refinishing floors in North Carolina?
Only for damage beyond normal wear and tear, and only for the actual cost. North Carolina’s Tenant Security Deposit Act also requires the landlord to itemize the damage in writing within 30 days after the tenancy ends and the unit is handed back. Talk to a property manager or attorney before deducting anything.
Should I recoat or fully refinish my rental’s hardwood floors?
Recoat when the finish looks dull or gray but hasn’t worn through to bare wood. Fully refinish when the wood is exposed, deeply scratched or stained. Recoating every turnover or every other one can put off a full sand for years.
What finish is best for hardwood floors in a rental?
A water-based, commercial-grade finish in three coats, with a matte or satin sheen and a mid-tone color. It dries fast with little odor and hides wear between tenants.
When should I book floor refinishing for a summer turnover?
Six to eight weeks ahead. Move-outs near Duke and NCCU bunch up in May, which is also one of the busiest months for refinishing.
Turning over a rental near Duke or NCCU?
We work in rentals all over Durham: around East Campus in Trinity Park, Walltown and Old West Durham, near NCCU off Fayetteville Street, and out in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Raleigh, Cary and Wake Forest. Read about refinishing rental floors in Durham, or send us the move-out date and book your turnover date before May fills up.
Vilchis Hardwood Floors 237 Obie Dr, Durham, NC 27713 (919) 794-1116 · [email protected] Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Written by Mario Vilchis, owner of Vilchis Hardwood Floors, a hardwood flooring contractor in Durham, NC that has been installing and refinishing floors across the Triangle since 2009.
