Service area
Wood Floors in Morrell Park, Philadelphia
Deco Hardwood Floor sands, refinishes, installs and rebuilds wood floors and stairs in Morrell Park, Philadelphia. The median home here dates to 1967, and 3.4% of the housing was built before 1940, which is what decides whether your floor is a refinish or a restoration.
What is usually under the floor here
Prefinished solid or engineered wood, and whether it can be sanded at all depends on the wear layer.
Housing from the 1980s and 1990s brought factory-finished floors and engineered construction into the mainstream. Both look like wood because they are wood, and both behave differently under a sander than the site-finished floors that came before.
Engineered flooring has a real wood layer over a plywood core, and that layer can be anything from a generous four millimeters to under two. Under two, sanding is not on the table. This gets measured, not assumed, and the answer decides whether the conversation is about refinishing or about replacement.
Worth knowing here
Factory finishes are usually aluminum oxide, which is harder than anything applied on site. It does not accept a new coat without proper abrasion, and skipping that step is why recoats peel.
The federal lead rule applies to most of the housing here
Approximately 76.6% of the homes here were built before 1978, which is the line the EPA rule draws.
Paid work that disturbs painted surfaces in pre-1978 housing falls under 40 CFR Part 745, and floor sanding reaches painted surfaces more often than people expect: the edger runs to the baseboard, the shoe molding and the door casing, and in older housing those carry many layers.
The part that matters for the equipment is 745.85(a)(3), which prohibits high speed machines that strip a coating on painted surfaces unless they carry containment and a HEPA vacuum collecting dust at the point of generation. That is a description of how the sander has to be assembled, not a suggestion about tidiness.
How the housing in Morrell Park compares
Of the 4,114 housing units in Morrell Park, roughly 140 were built before 1940 and approximately 3,200 before 1978.
That makes the housing here newer than the 132 Philadelphia neighborhoods in our data taken together, where approximately 82.8% of 733,961 units predate 1978, and above the 60.5% figure for our whole service area. By the share built before 1940, Morrell Park ranks 125th of those 132. The full table is published as open housing data.
Within Philadelphia, the oldest housing in our data is in Cedar Park, with a median year of 1925, and the newest is in Kensington, Old, at 1997.
| Place | Median year built | Built before 1940 |
|---|---|---|
| Morrell Park | 1967 | 3.4% |
| Academy Gardens | 1961 | 6.2% |
| Aston-Woodbridge | 1962 | 2.3% |
| Modena | 1965 | 5.0% |
| Torresdale | 1972 | 6.2% |
| Millbrook | 1965 | 3.7% |
| Pennypack Woods | 1951 | 4.9% |
What the work here usually looks like
The work here runs the normal range: refinishing floors that are still sound, installing new where they are not, and stairs.
Pennsylvania registers home improvement contractors through the Office of Attorney General rather than licensing them, and the registration number belongs on contracts, estimates and advertising.
What we do in Morrell Park
Hardwood Floor Refinishing
Sand the old finish off, repair what needs repairing, and put a new finish down
Dustless Floor Sanding
Vacuum-extraction sanding
Solid Hardwood Floor Installation
Solid wood, nailed down over a wood subfloor
Engineered Hardwood Installation
Real wood over a stable core
Luxury Vinyl Plank (LVP) Installation
Waterproof, quiet, and it does not care about a wet basement
Custom Stair Installation
Treads, risers, stringers and skirt board, built to a drawing instead of a catalog page
Stair Refinishing
Stairs take more wear per square foot than any floor in the house, and they are sanded almost entirely by hand
Hardwood Floor Repair
Board replacement, weaving in new wood, squeaks, gaps and cupping
Why homeowners hire Deco Hardwood Floor
Deco Hardwood Floor is owner operated: the person who quotes wood floor work in Morrell Park is the person responsible for it, and the material comes with the labor in one number.
Material and labor in one number
We buy the flooring direct from the distributor and pass the store price through, so you are not sourcing wood on your own between quotes.
Samples come to your house
Samples and larger offcuts come to you, so the color gets chosen in your own light instead of under a showroom lamp.
Stairs and railings built in house
Treads, risers, handrails and newel posts are drawn and built by our own crew. Most flooring crews subcontract stair work or decline it.
The owner quotes the job
The person who measures your floor is the person responsible for the work. There is no salesperson in between.
Measured before it is promised
Remaining thickness is measured at the edge of a board before we say a floor can be sanded, and no price is firm before we have seen the room.
Told straight, including the limits
Vacuum extraction catches most of the sanding dust and not all of it. We tell you that before the job instead of after.
More about who we are and what we will not claim on the About Deco Hardwood Floor page.
Questions about wood floors in Morrell Park
Can you tell me what my floor needs over the phone?
We can tell you what is likely, and this page is most of that answer. What we cannot do is quote a floor we have not seen, because remaining thickness and what is under the covering both decide the job and neither is visible in a description.
Do you bring the material?
Yes. We buy direct from the distributor and the material lands in the same number as the labor. Samples and larger offcuts come to the house so you choose in your own light.
How do I know if my engineered floor can be refinished?
By measuring the wear layer, which is the real wood on top of the core. Above about three millimeters there is room to work. Below two there is not, and no amount of care changes that.
Nearby neighborhoods
Send a photo and we will tell you what you are looking at
Wood floor work in Morrell Park starts with someone reading the house. We quote every job ourselves, with no salesperson in between, and a photo of the floor gets you a straight answer faster than a form does.
