I have old hardwood floors in my home that I'd like to refinish myself. I'm ok with all sorts of manual labor, but I'd like to know the preferred method for refinishing them without damaging my walls or baseboards.
Wood – the recommended technique for refinishing hardwood floors
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There is nothing wrong with putting engineered flooring on your slab in Florida. It can last a really long time and I have installed it in my own home on slab and helped with other homes.
Buy a really good wood. Make sure that you really give it a scratch test. Get samples and whatever. I used to take pennies, screwdrivers, smack my wife heals, all kinds of things on the samples. Let me tell you that most (80%) scratch easy.
Don't buy any engineered flooring that has mdf backing. Wood backing only.
The thicker the better. Don't let anyone talk you into flimsy engineered flooring, telling you thickness doesn't matter. IT DOES.
The underlayment... Normally I say rigid foam then 3/4" plywood then light flooring pad... But this is FLorida and you don't have the insulation issues. I would look for 1/2" rigid foam sheets but this depends on manufacturer.
I would wait 3-4 weeks for both house and wood in conditioned space.
I would also cut out the bottoms of the drywall so that you can use the drywall - probably 1/2" - as you expansion gap. This will allow you to use whatever trim you want without quarter round.
I wouldn't have the builder install any flooring. This will just cost you money and might hinder some of the engineered flooring installation.
Overall thoughts on engineered flooring on a slab in Florida vs tile or whatever... Obviously carpet is the easiest to do and the easiest to deal with. Tile though can have major issues. If your slab settles or cracks or whatever the tile will crack and have issues. The engineered flooring will handle smaller cracks without any issues. Major cracks, it depends.
Wall to wall carpeting is usually attached to the floor using carpet tack strips around the perimeter like these
The raised tack points grip the edges of the carpet.
Once you pull up the carpet, there is probably a padding that is just laid on the floor without adhesive. If it is rubber backed, the rubber bottom surface sometimes sticks to the floor underneath. Rubber residue can usually be scraped of with a plastic putty knife without damaging the surface of the wood underneath.
The tack strip can be pried up and there will be a few nail holes per strip that can be easily filled.
The real issue will be the condition of the finish on the floor once you get to it. If there is glue on the surface, this may be difficult to remove without serious sanding. Often the finish is fine and a cleaning is all that is needed.
If the finish is slightly worn or lightly scratched, a light sanding followed by a coat or two of polyurethane should restore it. Professional finishers have a light abrading process using large buffing machines that can do this easily and quickly. However it can be done with an orbital sander and lots of time and elbow grease. Very thorough vacuuming and wiping of all dust is essential for a good finish.
If the finish is badly worn or deeply scratched, a serious sanding and refinishing is called for. Again, it can be done by the DIYer, but this is a big job, sanding with power hand tools is very tedious and the professional sanding machines are difficult to use for the novice.
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Best Answer
Belt-style floor sanders were current years ago, but more recently the best bet is a random-orbit style sander like the Varathane ezV sander.
(source: rustoleum.com)
The random-orbit sanders don't have nearly the risk of grooving that the belt sanders do, and these ones also have a built-in vaccuum which collects a large portion of the dust, unlike the sanders of my childhood.
I've sanded both floors of my house using that system; each floor took about a 3-day weekend start to finish using a process similar to this one. I did find that I needed to use a hand-held belt sander for the edges, and since our floors are not all that even we used it to get the existing finish out of some of the deeper spots in the floor as well. If you pull out your trim and use some care you should be able to get right to the edges without having to do more than touch up the paint on the trim.
We just used the water-based polyurethane and have been quite happy with the results, but it's absolutely worth it to put down as many coats as you can - we ended up doing 4.