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Somerset is not a typical suburb. The homes along Essex Avenue, Dorset Avenue, and Cumberland Avenue were built by people who cared about craftsmanship, and the homeowners living in them today hold that same standard. When your floors are refinished correctly, the difference isn’t subtle. The grain comes back. The color is even. The finish doesn’t look plastic or rushed. You walk through your home and it feels like the house it was always supposed to be.
For homes in Somerset’s historic housing stock many of them 60 to 120 years old that outcome depends entirely on the contractor understanding what they’re working with. The DC metro climate is genuinely hard on hardwood. Summer outdoor humidity regularly pushes past 70 to 80 percent, and then winter heating pulls moisture back out. That seasonal cycle, repeated over decades, shows up as gapping, dull patches, cupping along the edges, and finish wear that no amount of cleaning will fix. Refinishing addresses the actual problem, not just the surface.
And if you’re preparing to sell, this matters financially. The median home sale price in the 20815 ZIP code sits around $1,375,496. At that price point, buyers notice everything and dull, scratched floors give them a reason to negotiate down. A professional refinishing job protects what you’ve built here.
We’re based in Bethesda, a few minutes from Somerset’s borders, and have been working in this exact corner of Montgomery County for over 50 years. That’s not a marketing number it means our crew has been inside homes on these streets through multiple ownership cycles, refinishing floors that were already old when the job started.
Gordon Franks, our founder and owner, personally supervises projects and stays in direct contact with clients from the first call through the final walkthrough. That’s a meaningful thing in a community of 440 homes where your neighbor’s experience with a contractor travels fast at the pool, at Town Hall, at the Back to School Classic. We’ve earned 300-plus recommendations on DC Consumers’ Checkbook by standing behind the work.
We hold Maryland MHIC License No. 28145, DC License No. 39937921, and Virginia License No. 2705077763, and are fully insured coverage that protects you, not just the crew. In a high-value home, that distinction matters.
It starts with an honest assessment. Before any sanding or staining begins, we evaluate the floor board condition, remaining wear layer thickness, moisture levels in the subfloor, and whether any boards need repair or replacement before the refinishing work starts. For Somerset’s older homes, especially those with pre-1905 original floors or 1960s-era hardwood that’s been refinished before, this step isn’t optional. It determines what’s actually possible and what approach makes sense.
From there, the process moves through sanding with progressively finer grits to remove the old finish evenly without cutting too deep into the wood. If you’re changing the stain color, water popping opens the grain so the stain absorbs uniformly skipping this step is one of the most common reasons refinished floors end up blotchy. Then come multiple finish coats, with humidity and drying time monitored between each one.
In Somerset’s humid summer months, that monitoring isn’t just a formality it directly affects how the finish cures and how long it holds. Standard hardwood floor refinishing, installation, repair, and sanding don’t require a building permit for interior work in Somerset. If your project involves structural subfloor work, the dual-layer permitting process Montgomery County first, then the Town of Somerset applies, and we can walk you through what that means for your specific job.
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We handle the full range of hardwood flooring work hardwood floor installation, hardwood floor refinishing, hardwood floor sanding, hardwood floor repair, and engineered hardwood flooring. That matters in Somerset because the housing stock is genuinely varied. A pre-1905 Victorian on Warwick Place has different needs than a 1960s split-level on Surrey Street, and both are different from a contemporary tear-down replacement built in the last decade.
Engineered hardwood is common in newer Somerset builds, and one of the most frequent questions homeowners have is whether it can be refinished at all. The answer depends on the wear layer if it’s thick enough, typically around three millimeters or more, refinishing is a real option. If not, recoating or targeted board replacement may be the smarter call. That assessment happens before any work is quoted, so you’re not being pushed toward a service that doesn’t fit your floor.
Because we’re also a full-service contractor handling painting, tiling, cabinetry, and remodeling Somerset homeowners doing a broader refresh before listing or after a renovation can coordinate everything through one contractor. One schedule, one point of contact, one crew that already knows the home. For a community where good contractors are genuinely hard to book, that consolidation is worth something real.
In many cases, yes but it requires an honest assessment first. Original hardwood floors in Somerset’s older homes, some built before 1905, have typically been refinished at least once over their lifetime. Each refinishing removes a thin layer of wood, so the question isn’t just whether the floor looks bad it’s whether enough wear layer remains to sand again without cutting through to the tongue-and-groove underneath. We can measure this before committing to any work.
For homes within the Somerset Historic District, interior work including flooring is not subject to Historic Area Work Permit review that process applies to exterior changes only. So refinishing original floors in a designated historic home in Somerset doesn’t trigger additional permitting. What it does require is a contractor with the experience to handle older wood species, irregular board dimensions, and floors that may have been through multiple finish cycles. We’ve been working on exactly these floors in the Bethesda and Chevy Chase area for over 50 years.
More than most homeowners realize. The DC metro area runs outdoor humidity regularly above 70 to 80 percent from June through September, and then winter heating drops indoor moisture levels sharply. Hardwood expands when it absorbs humidity and contracts when it dries out. In a home that’s been through this cycle for 40 or 60 years, you’ll see the evidence: gaps between boards in winter, slight cupping or raised edges in summer, and finish wear that’s heaviest along the grain lines and high-traffic paths.
This isn’t damage in the catastrophic sense it’s what wood does in this climate. Professional refinishing addresses it by removing the compromised finish, correcting surface irregularities through proper sanding, and applying a new finish that’s appropriate for the humidity environment. Somerset’s location along the Little Falls Branch watershed also means some older homes with crawl spaces or aging foundations can have elevated subfloor moisture, which we check before installation or refinishing begins. Getting that moisture reading right upfront prevents problems down the road.
For most Somerset homeowners, refinishing is the right call and the numbers support it. Hardwood floor refinishing returns approximately 147 percent ROI at resale, according to NAR and NARI data. In a market where the median sale price in the 20815 ZIP code is around $1,375,496, buyers walking through a home with dull or scratched floors are mentally discounting the price. A professional refinishing job costs a fraction of what that discount could cost you in the final negotiation.
Replacement makes more sense when more than a third of the boards are damaged enough that refinishing alone won’t fix them, or when the floor has been refinished so many times that there’s no wear layer left to sand. An honest assessment before you commit to either path is the right starting point. We evaluate the actual condition of your floors and tell you which option makes sense not which one costs more.
Refinishing involves sanding the floor down to bare wood, then applying stain and multiple finish coats. It removes scratches, stains, and finish wear at the surface level, and it gives you the option to change the color entirely. It’s the more involved process and the one that produces the most dramatic results.
Recoating sometimes called screening skips the sanding step. Instead, the existing finish is lightly abraded to give the new coat something to bond to, and a fresh layer of polyurethane is applied on top. It’s faster, less disruptive, and less expensive, but it only works if the existing finish is still in reasonably good condition and bonded properly to the wood. If there are deep scratches, staining, or areas where the finish has peeled or worn through to bare wood, recoating won’t cover those problems you’ll need a full refinish. For Somerset homeowners with floors that are showing light dullness but no structural damage, recoating can extend the life of the finish by several years before a full refinish becomes necessary.
A typical refinishing project runs three to five days from start to finish, depending on square footage, the number of finish coats, and drying time between coats. During the sanding phase, you’ll want to be out of the immediate area dust containment systems reduce airborne particulate significantly, but the process isn’t silent or odor-free. Once the finish coats go down, the floor needs to cure before foot traffic resumes, typically 24 to 48 hours for light use and longer for full hardening.
In Somerset’s humid summer months, drying and curing times can run slightly longer because of the moisture in the air. We account for this by monitoring humidity and scheduling finish coats accordingly. If you’re planning a refinishing project in advance of a spring listing which is common in this market fall or early spring are the most favorable windows for timing. The moderate humidity during those months makes for better curing conditions and a more predictable project timeline.
Yes, and we publish our license numbers openly so you can verify them yourself. Somerset is in Maryland, where the Maryland Home Improvement Commission requires a valid MHIC license for any home improvement contractor operating in the state. We hold Maryland MHIC License No. 28145. We also hold DC License No. 39937921 and Virginia License No. 2705077763 which matters for Somerset homeowners who may also own or work on properties across the DC and Virginia lines.
You can confirm the Maryland MHIC license through the state’s public database in a few minutes. A contractor who can’t provide a valid MHIC number isn’t legally permitted to work on your home in Somerset and if something goes wrong, your homeowner’s insurance and legal recourse can be complicated by unlicensed work. We’re also fully insured, with coverage that protects you in the event of damage or injury during the project. In a home worth over a million dollars, that’s not a formality it’s a baseline you shouldn’t negotiate away for a lower bid.
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