Floor refinishing and restoration in Washington, DC

Historic district rules apply to the outside, not your floors

A great deal of DC housing sits inside a historic district, and owners often assume that means every improvement turns into a review process. For flooring, it generally does not. The District’s historic preservation review is concerned with exteriors and additions: facades, windows, roof decks visible from the street, dormers and entrances. The interior of most homes is yours to work on. Refinishing original boards, replacing a damaged section, installing new flooring or restoring a room after a leak sits outside that review in the ordinary case.

That is genuinely useful to know, because it is the single most common reason DC owners delay interior work they could have had done months earlier. We are a flooring and restoration contractor rather than a permit consultant, so confirm anything specific with the Historic Preservation Office, particularly if your project touches the exterior at any point.

On the floors themselves, the District rewards patience. Original heart pine and oak turn up regularly under carpet and under later vinyl in Capitol Hill, Shaw, Petworth, Bloomingdale and Columbia Heights. Some of it is worth refinishing and some of it is too far gone, and we will tell you which you have before you commit to either path.