← Hardwood refinishing bid calculator
The number a homeowner wants is a price per square foot. That number is not a takeoff. A 400 sq ft living room of screen-and-recoat is not the same job as 400 sq ft of hallway plus fourteen stair treads, two closets, and a stain change. The footage is identical. The hours are not.
Open the free bid calculatorA typical first floor has a stair run the homeowner never includes in the living-room number, and every closet still has to be cut in. Flooring install prices waste and tear-out. Hardwood refinishing prices sanding time on surfaces that do not show up in a tape-measure of the field. Quoting both from a published per-square-foot number is how the stairs eat the field margin.
Buffing an existing finish and rolling two coats is the fastest refinish. Full sand — cut-in around the edges, field passes, a sealer, and two finish coats — is a different crew-day. The calculator keeps a hours-per-100 figure on the field only. Stairs, closets, furniture, and repairs stay their own hours so a dustless adder cannot hide which part of a high bid is sanding time.
Stain and a color-change extra coat are labor on every sanded square foot, including treads and risers. A 14-tread hallway can put more than fifteen percent of the job’s hours on stairs the homeowner never counted. Treating that as a blended “add 20%” is how the hallway special that looked fine turns into a loss.
A $42/h finisher loaded at 30% payroll burden is $54.60. Margin is a share of the price you send, not a markup on cost. The walk-away price is total cost — below that the job makes nothing before you take a dollar home. On the sample 800 sq ft first floor with 12 treads the calculator prices about $7,604 ($9.50 per field square foot, 75.3 crew-hours, walk-away $5,703). The same house as sand-and-stain is several hundred dollars more. Replace every rate with your invoices before you send either number.
This is not a flooring specification, an adhesion or sheen warranty, a permit, or a recommended market price. It is arithmetic on the numbers you type. Grit sequence, dustless containment, and whether stairs are stained to match are yours to confirm.
Charge from field square footage, stair treads, closets, screen-and-recoat versus full sand, stain, extra coats for a color change, loaded labor, overhead, and a margin that is a share of price. A default 800 sq ft first floor with 12 treads on full sand prices around $7,604 on the sample rates in this calculator — about $9.50 per field square foot.
Homeowners measure rooms. Stair treads, closets, stain, and an extra coat do not scale with that footage. Matching a cheaper per-square-foot quote written for a same-color screen-and-recoat is how a sand-and-stain hallway with a stair run becomes a loss.
Treat each tread as its own hours plus a few square feet of tread and riser for finish gallons — not a blended add-on to the living-room footage. On the sample rates that is about 0.4 hours per tread. A 14-tread hallway can put more than 15% of the job's hours on stairs the homeowner never counted.