[djmcmath]

In case you're tempted to sand, stain, and polyurethane, let me convince you otherwise. It is an order of magnitude more painful than you estimate, even after you bump up your estimate by an order of magnitude. It's miserable.

We bought a house this spring with original hardwood floors that had been carpeted over, after having been refinished at least once in their 80 year life. We figured we had 6 weeks left on our rent before we moved in -- it shouldn't be any challenge to pull the carpet up, remove all the staples/nails, sand, stain, and polyurethane, right? (sigh) To make a long story short, sanding off old polyurethane is amazingly hard. The poly binds up the sandpaper, and you go through paper pretty quick. And the floors were a lot more rough than we had thought, so it took a lot of wood to make it smooth.

The next thing we knew, we were moving in to the breakfast nook, because it was the only place in the house that didn't have hardwood floors that we were trying to refinish.

Not to hijack the thread, but as a warning against undertaking the kind of foolishness that we embarked on.

Enjoy!

Dan