Hello, I'm happy to have found this board, for I recently moved into a 1904 home, which we were happy to discover has potentially beautiful hardwood under the carpet, linoleum, tile, etc in every room in the house. We plan on refinishing it all, with the exception of the bedrooms, where the floor has been painted too many times, and is pretty damaged from all the layers of particle board and carpet.

Anyway, my immediate task is to refinish the floors in the bathroom. Its just too lovely to tile over, so we want to keep the hardwood. But with a small child we imagine that floor will get quite wet. I'm looking for ideas on how to best ensure the floor is sealed and waterproof, particularly name brand products to use, and how much.

Sand the floors to NWFA and NOFMA specs. The product I prefer is Bona Dry Fast stain and (3) coats of their "Traffic" waterborne polyurethane. This finish is the most durable floor finish on the market at this time, IMO. An alternative would be to use Waterlox penetrating tung oil finish. It has outstanding water resistant properties as well and easy to use. It is not as scuff or scratch resistant as Traffic and will require more maintainence coats over time but it is easy to apply and use and has an excellant appearance. Either product should protect your bathroom floors fairly well. An alternative would be to apply Waterlox as a sealer/stain and after allowing about 72 hrs. dry time, apply a 2 or 3 coats of Traffic. This way, you get the best of both.

Now it's probably too late at this stage for this project, but what are your thoughts on pulling up old hardwood and putting down new subflooring--especially in a case like this where there should probably be cement board or something beneath? I had not even considered this seriously because the wood seemed so old and I was afraid of cracking etc.

What are you trying to do? No problem to remove old flooring, just don't plan on trying to reuse. If you want to put tile in there, then I would remove the old flooring down to the subfloor and if the existing subfloor is strong and stiff enough, then a cement based tile backer board could be used to install tile over. If you want to keep the wood in there, just sand it and finish it with the choice of finishes I gave you. Wood floors in full bathrooms don't usually work so well due to the moisture but if you keep an eye on that, it may work out for you.