Red oak under the carpet in a 1968 ranch: sand it or cover it with LVP

Dumb question probably, but can you even put LVP straight over hardwood, or does the oak have to come out first? That would change the price a lot.

@rigging you generally can float over it if it's flat, which is why lantern's vinyl quote is so close to the refinish quote. Tearing the oak out would add demo and disposal.

lantern, the two numbers being within a thousand dollars of each other is the whole thing for me. If vinyl were half the price I'd say vinyl and stop thinking. At 3,900 versus 2,900 you're paying a thousand dollars for a feature buyers in that price band actually name out loud. I'd want to know what the fastest comps sold at per foot before I decided, because a thousand dollars is nothing if it moves the sale price by five.

I put LVP in eight rental units and I'd do it again in every one of them, because tenants and dogs and move outs. Flips are a different buyer though. My rentals get chosen by people comparing three apartments in a week. A retail buyer at 285 is comparing your house to the one down the street with the shiny oak and they're standing in the living room making a feeling decision.

So my rental answer doesn't transfer here and I want to say that before someone quotes my LVP enthusiasm at you.

What does refinishing actually involve? I've only ever seen the finished version. Is it one crew or several, and is the pet stain thing common enough that you should just budget for the board swap up front instead of hoping?

@ember I asked something similar in another room and what stuck with me is that a stain that went through the finish usually went into the wood too, and sanding only takes off a thin layer. So the stain is a maybe, not a solved problem.

lantern, reading your post twice, the part I'd worry about is the four days of cure time. You said the strategy here is short timelines. Four dead days plus a week of smell during showings sounds like it costs more than the thousand dollar difference.

Couple of things from the install side.

Floor height. If you float vinyl over the oak you gain about a quarter to a half inch depending on the product and the pad. That hits your door bottoms, your appliance clearance at the dishwasher, and every transition to the bath tile. Those are small fixes that each take a trip, and trips are where cosmetic budgets go to die.

Stain removal. Ask the sanding guy to look at the bedroom before he quotes, not after. Dog urine that reached the wood usually leaves a dark shadow that no amount of sanding pulls out, and then you're weaving in boards, which is skilled work and slower than people expect.

On cure time, a waterborne finish is walkable much sooner than oil, sometimes same day for socks, furniture later. Costs more per foot. If the timeline is the constraint, that's the version to price rather than assuming four dead days.

I'd get the waterborne number before voting on anything.

girder is right about the waterborne and that's the answer to juniper's cure time point. I've had a floor sanded Monday and staged Wednesday.

My bias is oak whenever the oak is already sound. I did a 1960s three bedroom last year, similar shape to yours, and the sanded floors were the only thing anybody commented on at the open house. Vinyl doesn't get commented on. It gets accepted.

Everyone's arguing preference and lantern gave us the actual test in his own post. Three fastest comps had refinished hardwood in the remarks. That's not nothing, but it's three houses, and it might just mean those houses had hardwood.

What I'd want is the other direction. Did anything in that pocket sell with new vinyl throughout, and what did it do on days on market and price per foot? If the vinyl houses sold fine at the same number, you just saved a thousand dollars and four days.

One thing nobody's priced. Good floor sanders are booked out further than vinyl installers in most markets I work in, because there are fewer of them and the work is harder to fake. My crew can get a click floor down next week. A refinish, I'm calling three people and taking whoever has an opening in eighteen days.

Eighteen days of holding costs on a 285 flip is real money against a thousand dollar decision. Check availability before you check preference.

I let a cheap sander talk me into skipping a test patch on a 1950s house and he burned through to the nails in a hallway. Cost me two weeks and a partial board replacement I hadn't budgeted. That's the risk with oak that nobody mentions when they're romantic about original floors. You don't know what's under the old finish until the drum is running.

Still voted refinish. Just get someone whose work you've seen.

So the way this thread has landed for me: oak wins on buyer response, vinyl wins on schedule certainty, and girder and cobalt just showed both of those are movable with the right product and the right crew.

lantern, is the client's constraint money or calendar? Because those two answers point different directions and you've been arguing both.

@kestrel that's the right question and I'll answer the third option while I'm here, because someone always suggests it. The mixed approach, oak in the living areas and LVP in the bedrooms, is where I'd tell you to be careful. Every material change is a transition strip, every transition strip is a height difference, and once you've got two floors going you start finding reasons to feather in a third at the entry. I've watched a 4,000 dollar floor become 7,200 that way with nobody making a single bad decision.

Pick one surface for the public spaces and hold the line. If it's oak, sand all of the connected oak including the hallway. If it's vinyl, run it wall to wall and let it die at the bathroom tile.

And on the pet bedroom, price the board weave now. Assume the stain stays. If it sands out you're pleasantly surprised, which is the only kind of surprise a cosmetic budget can absorb.