Most flooring articles tell you a whole-house job takes “about a week.” That number is useless, and I say that as someone who has quoted a lot of whole-house jobs. It depends on whether you are refinishing or replacing, whether the subfloor cooperates, and how many coats of finish have to dry in a house nobody can walk through.
So here is one job, start to finish, with the actual days and the actual money. A 1958 brick ranch off Hope Valley Road, 2,200 square feet of floor, one crew, ten working days. I picked this one because it had all three of the things that make a Durham house complicated: original oak worth saving, an addition that did not match anything, and a kitchen subfloor that had been quietly wet for a decade.
What we were working with
The house had 1,450 square feet of original 2¼ inch red oak under wall-to-wall carpet. Living room, dining room, hallway, three bedrooms. The homeowners had lived there four years and had no idea it was under there until a plumber pulled up a corner of the carpet in the hall closet.
Then there was a 1998 addition off the back, 480 square feet of family room, carpeted, sitting about a quarter inch low relative to the original floor. And a 270 square foot kitchen with 1990s sheet vinyl over luan.
The goal the homeowners gave us: one continuous wood floor through the whole house, with the new wood indistinguishable from the old. That is the hardest version of this job. It is also the one people in older Durham neighborhoods ask for most.
Day 1, Monday: material delivery and carpet demo
The wood showed up before we did. That is deliberate. Red oak needs to sit in the house it is going to live in, at the temperature and humidity it will actually experience, and the NWFA installation guidelines are specific that a house should be running its HVAC for at least five days before flooring arrives. This one had been, because people were living in it.
We cross-stacked the bundles with spacers in the family room so air could move around every board, then started pulling carpet.
Carpet demo is the fastest satisfying part of any job. Pad, tack strip, staples, out. By four o’clock the original oak was exposed for the first time since roughly 1978, and it looked about how we expected: dark in the traffic lanes, a few pet stains near the back door, one board split along the hallway.
Moisture readings before we left. NWFA wants a minimum of 20 readings across the first 1,000 square feet and at least three per room, so we took 34 across the house, paying attention to the exterior walls and everything near plumbing. Subfloor averaged 9.2 percent. Fine.
Day 2, Tuesday: kitchen vinyl and the thing we found under it
Kitchen sheet vinyl and luan came up, and the plywood under the dishwasher was black and soft across about eleven square feet. Not a burst pipe. A slow supply-line weep that had been going on long enough to grow something.
We stopped, photographed it, and called the homeowner with a number before touching anything else. Nine minutes on the phone. She was at work and not thrilled, but she approved it, and nobody was surprised by anything at the end.
I will be blunt about why we do it this way. When a crew finds rot mid-demo and just fixes it, the homeowner sees the charge on the final invoice and feels ambushed, even if the work was necessary and the price was fair. The work is the same either way. The phone call is what makes it not feel like a bait and switch.
Also pulled the family room carpet. The addition had particleboard over plywood, which explained the height difference.
Day 3, Wednesday: subfloor repair
Cut out and replaced the damaged plywood in the kitchen. Sistered a joist that had taken some of the moisture. Screwed down about forty squeaks across the original floor, which you can only do properly once the carpet is gone and before the finish goes on.
Then the height problem. The addition sat low, so we shimmed and added a layer to bring it up flush with the original oak. Getting that transition right is the difference between a floor that reads as one room and a floor with a lump at the doorway that everyone trips on for the next twenty years.
Second round of moisture readings on the new plywood. Still good.
Day 4, Thursday: lacing in the new oak
New material was at 7.8 percent, subfloor at 9.1. NWFA’s rule for solid strip flooring under three inches wide is that the subfloor should sit no more than four percent above the flooring, so we were comfortably inside it and could start.
Lacing is the part of this trade that separates people. You do not butt new flooring against old at a doorway and call it a transition. You pull back the existing boards in a staggered line, then weave the new boards into that stagger so the seam disappears once everything is sanded flat. Done right, you cannot find where the 1958 floor ends and the 2026 floor begins.
We laced the kitchen and the family room into the original hall and dining room. Slow work. About 190 square feet on Thursday.
Day 5, Friday: finishing the install
Rest of the new oak went down, roughly 560 square feet. Faster than Thursday because most of it was open field rather than weave-in.
By Friday afternoon the house had a continuous, unfinished wood floor from the front door to the back wall of the addition. Rough, three different shades of oak, gaps at the walls for expansion. It looks terrible at this stage. Every homeowner has the same worried expression on Friday of week one, and I have stopped trying to talk people out of it. The sanding is what makes it make sense.
The weekend, and a scheduling confession
NWFA suggests letting newly installed unfinished flooring stabilize for five to seven days before sanding, when the schedule allows. Our schedule allowed three: Saturday, Sunday, Monday.
I would rather be honest about that than pretend otherwise. Here is the reasoning. The new material was already within one and a half percent of the subfloor and living in a conditioned house that had been at 44 percent relative humidity all week. The risk you are managing with that waiting period is boards moving after you flatten them. With the numbers that close, three days was a defensible call, and the floor has been down two years now with no cupping.
If the readings had been further apart, we would have waited the full week and pushed the job. I have done that. Homeowners hate it and it is still the right answer sometimes.
Day 6, Monday: rough sanding
The big day. 36 grit across 2,200 square feet, big machine in the open rooms, edger around the perimeter, hand scraper in the corners and closets.
We run dust containment on the sanders, which is what “dustless” actually means. It does not mean zero dust. Anyone telling you zero is selling something. It means the fine airborne grit that normally settles on every surface in your house for the next three weeks goes into a vacuum instead. The homeowners stayed in the house through the whole job, which is only possible because of this.
Rough sanding is also where you find out what you really have. Three boards in the hallway turned out to be too thin to sand, likely from a previous refinish in the eighties. We cut those out and wove in replacements on the spot.
Day 7, Tuesday: intermediate and final passes, then color
Sanded up through 60 and 80 grit, edged again, then screened. Vacuumed twice and tacked the whole floor.
Then the part that decided whether this job worked: color. New red oak and 68-year-old red oak do not take stain the same way. Old wood has oxidized, it is more porous in the traffic lanes, and it drinks differently.
So we put five sample patches directly on the finished floor, each one straddling a seam between old wood and new. Not on a sample board. On the actual floor, in the actual room, and we left them until the homeowners could look at them in the afternoon light and again the next morning. Color reads completely differently at 9 a.m. than it does at 4 p.m., and this step has changed a lot of minds about what people thought they wanted.
They picked a blend of two stains, weighted slightly warm. Applied it Tuesday evening.
Days 8, 9 and 10: finish coats
Three coats of water-based finish, one per day, with an abrasion pass between coats two and three.
Water-based was their call and I agreed with it. They have a kid with asthma and they were sleeping in the house. Oil-based gives you that amber tone people love, and it fills the house with fumes for days. Water-based goes on clear, dries in a few hours, and barely smells. The tradeoff is that it does not add warmth on its own, which is part of why the stain blend mattered so much.
Our cleaning crew came Friday afternoon after the last coat was down and did the rest of the house. Sanding grit travels. It gets on top of door frames and inside kitchen cabinets, and most flooring companies here hand you the keys and let you deal with it.
Furniture went back the following Tuesday. Rugs three weeks after that, because water-based finish keeps curing well past the point where it feels dry, and a rug laid too early traps solvent and leaves a permanent outline.
What it cost
Written fixed price, quoted before we started, except the subfloor repair which was approved on day 2.
| Line item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Carpet, vinyl and luan demo plus haul-off, 2,200 sq ft | $1,320 |
| New 2¼ inch red oak, material and install, 750 sq ft | $6,750 |
| Subfloor repair, joist sistering, kitchen plywood | $1,150 |
| Sand, stain and three coats of finish, 2,200 sq ft | $9,350 |
| Shoe molding and transitions | $840 |
| Post-job cleaning | $450 |
| Total | $19,860 |
That works out to about $9 per square foot across the whole house, which lands in the middle of our normal range because most of the floor was refinished rather than replaced. Tearing out all 2,200 square feet and installing new would have run closer to $26,000 for a floor that looked the same. That is the argument for checking under the carpet before you order anything.
The part worth remembering
The schedule was ten working days against a quote that said nine. That extra day was the subfloor repair on Wednesday, and nobody could have seen it at the estimate because it was under sheet vinyl.
Estimating the visible work is easy. Anyone can measure a room. What wrecks timelines is what is underneath it, which is the whole reason we measure in person and take moisture readings before we commit to a start date. It is also why I get twitchy when I hear that another company quoted someone a firm whole-house price over the phone. They are either padding it heavily or they are going to find something on day two and have an awkward conversation about it.
If you have carpet in an older Durham house and you have never looked under it, go look. Pull up a corner in a closet where nobody will see the hole. There is a real chance you are standing on the best floor you could buy.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a whole-house flooring job take in Durham?
For 2,000 to 2,500 square feet, plan on eight to twelve working days if you are sanding and finishing on site. Prefinished material cuts several days off because there is no sanding or dry time, and LVP or laminate over the same area often finishes in two or three days. Refinishing existing hardwood without any new installation usually runs three to four days.
Can you match new hardwood to floors from the 1950s?
Usually, yes, and it comes down to two things. Lacing the new boards into the old in a staggered line rather than butting them at a doorway, and testing stain samples on the actual floor across an actual seam. Species, plank width and sheen all have to match too, but color is where most jobs succeed or fail.
Can we stay in the house during a whole-house floor job?
Most of our clients do. With dust-contained sanding and water-based finish, the main constraint is that you cannot walk on a room while it is being coated. We sequence rooms so there is always a path to a bathroom and a bed. If you are having oil-based finish applied, plan on staying somewhere else for two or three nights.
Is refinishing cheaper than replacing?
Substantially. Refinishing existing hardwood in Durham runs about $3 to $5 per square foot, against $8 to $14 for tearing out and installing new solid hardwood. On this job it was the difference between roughly $19,900 and roughly $26,000. Solid boards will take four to six sandings over their life, so a 1950s floor often has plenty left. We wrote more about the cost side of refinishing if you want the breakdown.
How do I know if my subfloor is going to be a problem?
You mostly do not until the old flooring comes up, and any contractor who tells you otherwise is guessing. What you can do is ask whether the company takes moisture readings before scheduling, and how they handle a change order if they find something. Get that answer before you sign.
About the author
Mario Vilchis is the owner of Vilchis Hardwood Floors & Tile, a flooring company in Durham, NC that has been installing and refinishing floors across the Triangle since 2009. He runs the crew that does the work, and he is the person who comes out to measure your floors. The company does not subcontract. Vilchis installs hardwood, luxury vinyl plank, laminate, tile, epoxy and floor coatings for homeowners in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Apex, Morrisville, Garner and Wake Forest. Recent work is in the project gallery, and if you are on the Wake County side, there is a separate page for Raleigh flooring.
Get a quote on your whole-house project
We do free in-home estimates. We measure, look at the subfloor and whatever is on it now, talk through what you are trying to get to, and email a written fixed price within a day or two. No charge and no obligation.
Vilchis Hardwood Floors & Tile 237 Obie Dr, Durham, NC 27713 (919) 794-1116 Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Related reading: hardwood vs vinyl plank in Durham, how to clean hardwood floors without wrecking the finish, and a 20-year care plan for vinyl flooring.
