Sanding Old wooden Floors

N

Newbie!

Registered User
Messages
895
Hi,

I am hoping to start sanding the upstairs floors in a 1940's house this week. We have pulled off the carpet and the condition of the floors is medium to good in parts. There are what i assume to be glue marks along the walls from carpets.

Basically, a friend has given us a hand sander and there is a rental shopo nearby to rent the industrial sander but I am looking for advice on the best procedure from people who have already done this?

ie. How to begin sanding, how long will it take, best varnish, how many coats, can we remove all stains etc?

thanks,
 
Leo said:
Hi Newbie, plenty of advice in the Key Post on wooden floors, including a link to this site on sanding floors.
Leo
Click to expand...

thanks Leo, I did look through previous threads before posting mine but most of them pertain to new floors. I am particularly interested in advice on how to remove stains etc on old floors. Also if a board is cracked or chipped, would you leave it as part of the character or remove it and try to blend in a new board?
 
Hubby & I took on a simular project a few years ago in my in-laws sittingroom. It had a coat of what looked like black paint for about 6" all around the edge of the room. We cleaned the paint off with nitromors. Then got an industrial sander and then finished it off with a hand sander. Big Job! Someone had replaced a few boards a few years previously, so we got pine sadolins and gave the floor a coat just to blend in the colours and then we gave it 2 coats of diamond coat and then a light sanding again with the hand sander and washed again with white spirits and then a final coat of diamond coat. It came up lovely and still looks good today - its a room that does'nt get used much.

I personally would'nt replace any boards if only a chip here and there I think it adds character - thats the whole idea of a wooden floor! Good Luck!
 
As mentioned on the kevinboone site, not much more you can do about stains than just sand them and hop they didn't penetrate too much. The floor will never look perfect, if that's what you're after, just rip it up and replace it, lot less work in that than sanding and varnishing an old floor.

You could always put a stain on the floor, a darker stain may disguise badly stained planks. Stain over filled cracks would look less obtrusive than a clear varnish.

As with any floor, much of it will be covered with furniture or rugs, judicious placement of these may hide the worst.
Leo
 
thanks Leo, just wondering if you or any other readers have experience with the industrial sanders - are they the way to go or are they alot of hassle?
 
Yeah, I've used them in the past, and they're the only way to do this kind of work.

They're not too difficult to manage, but make sure you go over the floor beforehand with a hammer and punch and drive all nails a few mil below the surface of the wood. These will shred the sandpaper, and the less of this you use, the less you pay in the end. Most places will give you more than enough sheets, and refund you on whatever you bring back unused. Get both a drum sander for the main body of work, and an disk sander for doing around the edges.

Don't even bother with the hand sander, especially if the floors are in a bad way as you say.
Leo
 
Newbie,
I've been there, done that. As suggested, get the industrial sander (and preferably some cheap labour to do it!) I wanted a matt finish and bought some water based varnish - but it took 4 coats to get the effect I wanted. Oil based varnish takes longer to dry but doesn't need as many coats.
 
We've sanded an old floor a few years back. Neither of us had ever used an industrial sander before... The floor wasn't in great shape and had the same dark edges as mentioned previously, but with the sander if came out totally stainfree. I remember the advice we got from the hire shop - when you switch on the machine you have to start moving it immediately, otherwise you get a dip at the starting point. But we didn't find it hard to manage at all, cleaning and varnishing was the bit that required patience...
 
I did this job on my house last year and the industrial sander is great. Very easy to use. The one bit of advice I have is not to use the sheets the hire company give you with the sander, go to a DIY store and buy the sanding paper by the metre - just cut it to the same size and it works out much cheaper. The hire shop charges by how many sheets you have used - but the ones you buy yourself are much cheaper.
 
Hi everyone,

Just to continue on the same thread. I am in the middle of sanding but the floors are not coming up to what I'd like them to be. I think it would be best to stain it. I would like the stain only to be a little darker than the original colour but there are so many colours and varieties of stains on the market that I have no idea what to use. Has anyone used anything that they could recommend?
 
So many on the market- and most leading brands will do the job. Best to sand a piece of the same timber and test a few- it's the only way. If you can't find a piece of the same flooring that can be spared then you might consider sanding the underside of a piece and using that as a sample board.
 
would also recommend a good face mask and ever goggles!Its a dirty job-also-when I did it some years ago the vibration caused some ornamnents to fall to the floor in the room below.My other half wasnt best pleased!
 
Went shopping for the stain yesterday in Homebase and eh...couldn't actually find anything..they had a pretty poor selection, alot not for floors etc...Can anyone recommend a tried and tested stain?? I can then pick the colour we want...

Also, we have a couple of gaps between boards that I'm sure would be painful if your toe caught in them. A friend told us to get wood filler but when we went looking, all the wood fillers said 'not suitable for floors'....any ideas on an alternative???

thanks!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top