Hardwood Floor Refinishing in the Hill Section, Scranton
The Hill Section holds the grandest housing in Scranton: large Victorians and early-1900s homes built when the anthracite money was at its peak, on generous lots with rooms scaled to match. The floors in these houses were specified accordingly.
This is where we most often find inlaid borders, patterned parquet in entries and dining rooms, and quarter-sawn white oak with the ray fleck that modern plain-sawn stock does not show. It is also where we most often find American chestnut, which the blight wiped out in the early 1900s and which cannot be replaced with anything but salvage.
Detail Work, Not Just Floor Area
Hill Section jobs take longer per square foot than anywhere else in the city, because the work is rarely a plain open floor. Inlaid borders have to be sanded across the grain transition without dishing. Parquet needs a different sanding sequence entirely. Ornate staircases with turned balusters and heavy newel posts are hand-sanded, not machined.
If a room has a border or a medallion, tell us on the phone. It changes the approach and the quote, and it is the single most common thing that gets missed when people are comparing prices.
Chestnut and Thin Floors
Where we find chestnut, the conversation changes. It is softer than oak, it is irreplaceable, and in a house of this age it may already have been sanded more than once. We measure the remaining thickness above the tongue before committing to a sanding. Often the right answer is a screen and recoat, which removes no wood at all, or targeted board repair rather than a whole-floor sand.
Color in Large Rooms
Dark walnut and jacobean read well in Hill Section houses in a way they do not in smaller spaces, because there is enough natural light and enough ceiling height to carry them. We apply test patches on your own floor before committing, since old-growth oak takes stain differently from anything you will see on a sample card.