Refinishing hardwood floors...

We did our first house ourselves. Be forewarned the machine can get away from you and cut dips.. Well, that was a while ago, maybe they're different now.

I hired someone to do the floors in my last house, that is, the first half, and came home to gdamned sawdust all over the place. I should have done the plastic/taping myself. Lesson #2.


You're no fool and could probably do it. Read up on the internet sites re what to watch out for. Get good quality varnish. I'd start with the least important room to try it out.

Tico no doubt knows more, if she happens by....

I know I won't be any help, but I don't see any reason why you can't do it yourself.

The sanding is obviously the hard part and as Osso stated, I've heard the sander is not an easy thing to handle and tries to get away. Takes a while to get use to it, but again, as Osso mentioned, there may be something better out there these days.

Looking forward to see more responses, as I'm interested in knowing how to go about doing this, as well.

Good luck with everything :-D

Osso, was that an orbital sander or a belt sander? I've been pointed toward belt sanders as they're easier to manage. Anyway, I'm a pretty large feller and I wrangle animals by day, so hopefully I can keep the beast under control.

My greater concern is actually that I would screw up the varnish somehow, or not recognize a potential problem going in...

What do you mean by screwing up the varnish? Are you speaking of the application process once the floors have been sanded?

Yep.

I used a water-based urethane on my wood floors and I liked the results. One of the things with varnish or some of the petroleum products is the odor is almost too much to bear. My house was built in 1927 and has the nice oak-planked floors with the smaller boards. The urethane gave it a nice glow, not that shiny, plastic look most people go for.

The sanding part is a piece of cake. Little dusty, for sure, but the machine is quite manageable.

Good luck, grasshopper.

Thank you, gustavsan.

We did all our house floors and it was built in the 1700's with random width oak, upstairs heart pine and figured maple floors. When we moved in some as*hole had(downstairs) toenailed a modern style narrow parquet floor on the top, and painted all the upstairs with a godawful "flesh" color We removed that using these alligator jaw nail removers .

Then the hard part, taking off the varnish and sanding began. We checked the style of shellack they used and removed it with an ether base (Obviously dont fire up the fireplace or forget to wear the respirators. Meth Chloride removers are the most dangerous because they bind yer blood with CO . (Some floor refinishers have suffered heart attacks on the job).

We used a hand held 3.5" belt sander because we looked at floors sanded by those big ass belt machines and I hadnt seen one job where there wasnt a "well" of deep sanding that tailed off to a notcieable high ridge along the room edges. It isnt so much that you can control the machine, the machine can take some big bites out of the floor and I havent seen many pro jobs that I liked.

We sanded each board lengthwise before going on to the next. It took longer . We also, in the living room, keeping room, dining room, and parlor, and pantry, we actually removed the floor moulding and toe molding and went down the basement and removed the boards one by one, sanded them and then turned them over nd renailed them (Old floors were not T&G, they were butted and filled with oakum).
Id stay with a belt sander that wasnt too wide and too powerful so the floor looks even when your done. START with a room or closet where , if you screw up, you can learn from your mistakes.

We topped everything with Tung oil and this has remained for about 20 years. After which weve had the floor gently resanded and painted with a shellac. This looks great and doesnt have that "plastic " look that many polyurethanes leave.

Is the floor oak, maple, ash, hard pine, cherry? Are they wide boards or real narrow? T&G or butt? If T&G I suppose theyre toe nailed on the tongues.

Built in 1939, you don't have to worry about sanding through the boards unless you get really crazy. The boards are going to be 3/4" thick.

I believe the finish can be put on with a mop. Head down to your local Home Depot or Lowes and read the directions on a can of floor finish.

The biggest expense could well be the rental of the floor sander so plan your job so you don't have it sitting around idle for a week. Also you don't want to rent it 6 times to do 6 rooms.

The job is basically just sanding and applying finish, so a "pro" could step in any time to take over.

Am I reading it correct farmer? You actually pulled up the entire floor and sanded it by hand? Talk about a labor of love. How long did it take?

On our house, after the groove business in one part of the the living room area, we thought better of the orbital sander. I used a belt sander to do the small rooms rather like Farmerman did.

That was before the era of water based varnish..

(I'm ignorant re shellac, interested.)

yep, in the downstairs we removed all boards and sanded and flipped them so the toenail holes didnt show. It took months . I just dont like the look of floors done with the big belt sanders because they cant get close enough to the walls to do an even job. The machines got all this **** and gears long the edges.

A small sander will get the job done with less mess and more even . One of the hand orbital sanders do an ideal job along the edges. IMHO.


We had troubles with the stairs so we sanded and repainted the stairs in some original colonial color, and just removed the old paint from the steps so itd look worn by age. And the gross "flesh " colored paint was gone

My memory is returning... I do have an orbital hand sander, that must've been why I bought it. On the molding, I only took off the toe strip, and tried hard not to hit the molding that was then exposed.

Follow fman's advice: start with a very small space and use a hand-held sander.

On the downside - if you mess up, the pros can charge more for fixing your efforts than they would have to just come in and do the job to begin with (I've seen some professional jobs that are fabulous, others that aren't brilliant, none that I wouldn't have been able to live with).

Thanks for all the input.

Only reason I was worried about thickness was that I read somewhere about there being early (maybe experimental) versions of laminates, and I didn't know when these might have started. 1939 seemed early, but not out of the question.

The whole house except for kitchen and bathrooms is hardwood and the closets are tiny, so there's not really anywhere to do a little experiment without risking a border where different phases of sand-finish overlap (though this probably wouldn't be too dramatic). The house does have about 900 sq feet of floor upstairs and probably 400 to 500 upstairs, though, so starting on the top floor is certainly an option. Less of a concern as well because it's not an open, public area the way the downstairs will be. More important to get it just right in the living room than the upstairs bedrooms, to my thinking.

The floor is definitely a softwood -- probably pine, but I certainly couldn't say for sure. T&G is probably most likely -- I'd expect some uneven boards if it was butt, given the amount of time it appears to have gone unmaintained. I'll probably be inclined to replace all the molding along the floors while I'm at it...

"attic" or yellow pine is quite hard and is very stable. I dont think any body made laminates out of pine because it isnt an exotic . What grit were you going to start with? we began with like a 200/220. 80 is real coarse and thats the usual "starter " grit they put on the big floor sanders but it just tears the hell out of floors, even hard woods.

I dont think that youd have the possibility of lifting the bhoards out from the basement because they probably put a plywood base with some levelling compound over the basement joists.

Jeeze fm- that lot doesn't sound much fun.

I don't think you can give me lectures on doing the best you can with what you've got after such a sad and woeful tale of male aggravation, pain and distress.

An alternate view, F'man is my hero, and knows what he is doing.

And, I wouldn't worry about thickness re 1939. You could always do a drill in a closet... but I wouldn't do that either, unless you bought some experimental place.