Medford NJ pine wood floor repairs

This 100+ year-old pine floor in Medford, NJ underwent a huge restoration. Repairs, removing cheap laminate flooring, patching poorly done demolished wall repairs, staining, sanding, refinishing, making custom thresholds, installing custom baseboards, and old 1940s newspapers found under the floorboards, this project had it all.

Sometime in the past decade, the dining room had cheap laminate flooring installed on top of the original pine. That needed to be rectified asap. However, it had protected the floor from excess wear. Some damaged boards needed replacing, and a wall had been removed and roughly patched with plywood. That required some major floor surgery to blend both rooms together.

Project details...

We removed the plywood patch job and replaced the missing floorboards with matching 100+ year-old pine we had previously salvaged. It's essential to use similar-age pine when doing repairs like this, as new pine looks entirely different from old pine. Use the wrong wood, and the repairs will stand out like a sore thumb. The salvaged pine boards came from an old home in Haddonfield, NJ that was being demolished.

The photos above show the plywood patch job on the left and the repair work on the right.

Below is the finished repair. As mentioned above, we used 100+ year old pine flooring salvaged from an old house about to be demolished in New Jersey. We weaved the salvaged boards into the original flooring to make it look completely original…

Once the repairs were finished, we started sanding the floor. The first cut is done at a 45-degree angle to flatten the floor. Then multiple sandings are completed to remove all the previous dents, scratches, and damage.

During the repair work, we found some really cool newspaper clippings from the 1940s used to even out the floor…

Here's another section of the 80+ year-old Courier Post newspaper from March 27, 1941...

We also spent a fair bit of time making custom thresholds with the same 100-year-old salvaged pine, so they matched the floors…

Once sanded, the floors were water-popped in preparation for staining. The homeowners chose English Chestnut as the stain color. It looks great on the old pine floors. After the stain dried, we applied StreetShoe Super Matte from American finish manufacturer Basic Coatings. It's a durable commercial-grade finish system used in restaurants and dance floors. You can read about this finish here. It has a beautiful matte sheen that will hide scratches and mark much better than higher gloss finishes.

We also installed new taller baseboards to match the original ones throughout the rest of the house…

Below are the finished floors. Repaired, stained, and refinished. By using the salvaged boards for the repairs, it's impossible to tell what was original and what we replaced…

This was a fun hardwood floor sanding and refinishing project in Medford, NJ. We got to use all our floor restoration skills in one way or another. Plus, the fun of finding hidden treasure with those old newspaper clippings from 80 years ago. The customers were happy, and so were we.