Can engineered wood floors be sanded and revarnished?

[HerculesMulligan]

Just that, really. We inherited a horrible engineered floor (looks like very yellowy pine, I thought it was laminate but apparently not) when we bought this house and it's scratched to buggery. I can't afford to replace it at the moment (not least as there's a small possibility it's been laid onto 1960s asbestos tiles which will need to be properly removed - not easy when it's a big space in an open-plan house) but it is so bloody depressing to look at.

Could I get the floor sanded and stained, or is that a non-starter for an engineered floor?

Yes but usually only once as the wood is quite thin on top. Sounds like it might work and would be cheaper than new!

Did you give this a try @HerculesMulligan ?

We are about to redo the horrible laminate throughout our downstairs, only to realize upon lifting some in a cupboard that it's actually engineered wood so we could save ourselves a lot of money!

Yes. We had this done due to a few deep scratches. It looked absolutely terrible. We had it redone under the company's guarantee. It still looked dreadful. We paid the company and then ripped up the whole floor and replaced. Waste of money sanding and varnishing. Would never ever do it again.

The sanding showed uneven wear patterns.

The rollering showed roller lines.

The dull varnish and shiny varnish both showed up every single blemish.

Save your money and replace the flooring.

I haven't made any progress - I tried to get quotes but no-one was very interested, and I concluded I probably wouldn't like it anyway so gave up. The house should have 5-finger parquet (that was the standard flooring on our street when they were built in 1960) but someone many decades ago ripped it up and put down wide pine-coloured engineered boards. I really want to lift the whole floor and put down a parquet, even if it's herringbone rather than 5-finger. I decided that messing with the current crap engineered wood wouldn't actually make me happy, so I may as well save my money and do it properly.

Hmm @Chesure thanks for that, it's definitely lowered my expectations of what it might turn out like! The choice for us is to redo the entire downstairs (100sqm) or to try to refresh the engineered wood and then only need to replace the kitchen floor which would obviously save us a lot. So I think we might give the sanding a go and then just save up to replace it all if it still looks rubbish

I did mine - the biggest problem was not the way it looked but more the texture - it became quite slippy for the dog but our engineered wood was good quality.