Refinishing Wood Floors - Before or After Painting?

[Beth D.]

When do you refinish hardwoods?

In our first project, we refinished them after painting everything. Our thought was, since we were pulling up the carpet, it would be easier to not worry about ruining the new finished floors... but the sanding mess (even with a bag) was THE WORST. I spent f o r e v e r deep cleaning and even ended up repainting some of the white that just looked dirty.

Would it be weird to refinish first the tape roll out paper to preserve them from paint?

[Dell Schlabach]

Our crews always sand and finish the floors first, we cover with cardboard and tape all seams. Main reason is the dust everywhere when the project is almost complete, also is just more efficent for us, to not have floor sanding and finishing going on when we have guys trying to finish a project.