Timber floors sanded, repaired and coated across greater Brisbane — including the hardwood and hoop pine hiding under carpet in half the houses in this city. Licensed contractors, priced per square metre after the boards are actually looked at.
No obligation. Takes 30 seconds.
The jobs that come up most. Pick what's closest to your situation — or just tell us what's happening and we'll work it out.
The core job — taking a tired timber floor back to bare wood.
Read more →The finish itself — water-based or solvent, and how many coats.
Read more →Lifting carpet to find — and rescue — the original boards underneath.
Read more →Replacing damaged, cut or borer-affected boards before sanding.
Read more →Refreshing a worn finish without spending the floor's remaining thickness.
Read more →Changing the colour of a floor — and the one thing to do before committing.
Read more →Cupped, swollen or storm-affected floors — and why you must wait.
Read more →Block and mosaic parquetry — slower, more skilled, and easy to ruin.
Read more →Sand and polish runs $35 to $60 a square metre, so a three-bedroom house lands around $3,800 to $6,500. A recoat, if the timber is sound, is $18 to $30 — worth asking about before you commit to a full sand.
Three things bring a floor sander to a Brisbane house, and the first one is the reason this trade exists here at all.
Most Brisbane housing built before about 1960 has hardwood or hoop pine boards under whatever was laid on top. Carpet went down over perfectly good floors through the sixties and seventies, and a great deal of it is still there. Pulling it up and sanding what's underneath is usually far cheaper than laying a new floor, and on a Queenslander it is the single change that most transforms a room. The catch is that you don't know what condition the boards are in — or how many tack strips and staples went through them — until the carpet is up.
Brisbane's wet season swells boards and the dry pulls them back, and that annual cycle shows up as cupping — the edges of each board sitting higher than the centre. Sanding a cupped floor before it has stabilised just takes the high edges off, and when the timber relaxes you are left with a dished board and less thickness to work with. A floor that has recently been wet needs time and a moisture reading, not a sander.
Subfloor timbers and the boards themselves are both at risk here, and damage is regularly discovered only when the carpet comes up. Sanding will not fix a structurally compromised board — it needs replacing, and the source dealt with first. Any sander who finds it should be telling you to get a pest inspection rather than coating over it.
The pattern behind all of that is the same: a lot of Brisbane's timber went under carpet in the sixties and never came back out. Which means the most common job here isn't laying a new floor — it's rescuing one that's been sitting there for fifty years.
Floor sanding is a licensed QBCC class in Queensland, and the register is free to search before anyone starts.
Floor sanding has its own QBCC class in Queensland. Every contractor referred here holds one and you can verify it on the public register before they start.
A cupped or damp floor needs to stabilise before it's sanded. A sander who says 'let's wait and take a moisture reading' is doing you a favour, not stalling.
Modern machines run vacuum extraction. It isn't dust-free, but it's a different world to the drum sanders people remember.
Measured and quoted properly, with the coats and the carpet-lift spelled out.
Floor sanding looks like cosmetic work, so people assume anyone can do it. In Queensland that's wrong — there's a specific licence class covering exactly this, and it's worth two minutes to check before you let a machine loose on a floor you can't replace.
Approval is required for:
Approval is not required for:
The QBCC register is free and public — search the licence number before work starts. It matters here because sanding is irreversible: a floor has a finite number of sands in it, and an over-sanded or gouged board can't be put back. Unlicensed building work also sits outside the Queensland Home Warranty Scheme. Source: Brisbane City Council. Yes — there's a named class for it, Floor finishing and covering (hard sector), and its scope expressly covers sanding and coating timber floors. Most people assume this trade is unlicensed.
Full permit rules explainedCoverage runs across greater Brisbane — the inner suburbs where the old boards are, out to Ipswich, north to Redcliffe, and east to the bayside.
In Brisbane housing built before about 1960, very often yes — hardwood or hoop pine. Carpet was laid over sound floors through the sixties and seventies and a lot of it never came up. Lift a corner in a wardrobe or behind a door and have a look. What you can't tell that way is the condition, or how many tack strips and staples went through the boards, which is what an inspection is for.
Yes. There's a specific QBCC class — Floor finishing and covering (hard sector) — and its scope expressly includes preparing, sanding and applying coatings to timber floors. The general $3,300 threshold applies on top, which most whole-house jobs exceed. People assume sanding is unlicensed because it looks like surface work. It isn't.
A solid hardwood floor typically has three to five full sands in it over its life, depending on board thickness and how much was taken off previously. Engineered boards may have only one, sometimes none. This is why a light recoat is worth asking about where the timber is sound and only the finish is worn — it uses none of that budget.
Cupping is when the edges of each board sit higher than the centre, caused by moisture moving through the timber. Our wet season does it reliably. If a cupped floor is sanded flat before it stabilises, the boards will relax later and you'll be left with a dished surface and less thickness remaining. A moisture reading first is cheap insurance.
A typical three-bedroom house is three to five days including coats. You can usually stay if you can live around a closed-off area, but the finish needs curing time — light foot traffic after a day or so, rugs and heavy furniture considerably later. Ask for the specific curing times for the product they're using.
Water-based dries faster, smells far less and stays closer to the natural timber colour. Solvent-based (polyurethane) is traditionally harder-wearing and ambers the timber, which some people want on older hardwood. Both are durable now. The honest difference for most households is smell and colour, not longevity.
Much less than the reputation. Modern belt and orbital machines run vacuum extraction and a good operator seals the work area. It is not dust-free — fine dust settles for a few days afterwards — but it's nothing like the drum-sander horror stories.
Yes — greater Brisbane, out west to Ipswich, north to Redcliffe and Sandgate, and east to Wynnum, Manly and Cleveland. Those sit in different councils but QBCC licensing is set at state level and doesn't change across the boundary.
Tell us the suburb, the rough area, and whether it's under carpet.
Call 0468 158 248