I was pricing out some rental equipment (drum sander) last night and the gentleman at the rental place told me that to remove the old finish I should chemically strip the floor first, then start the sanding process. His reasoning was that trying to sand the old finish uses up lots of expensive sanding belts.

This sounds logical, however I'm not sure I want to get into using a bunch of caustic chemicals to remove. Also most of the information I've read just assumes that you'll be sanding off the old finish.

Any thoughts? The area I'm considering doing isn't very large- about 200 sf. The old home-owner tried refinishing the same area himself and left me the can of minwax-something in the shed... it would probably be easy to find out what it is and how to remove it, but I'm not sure what if any prep they did before applying the minwax.

At the end of the day I'd like to use the bona series stain, and then the mega product whether I decide to try sanding the floor myself or decide to hire a pro to sand and then maybe try staining and sealing myself.

Thanks for any advice!

Carolyn

Chemical strippers are a real bad idea. They will effect the adhesion of the new finish.

Before I got a real professional sander I used a 110 machine and 24 grit paper to take off many old shellac and wax finished floors. It takes a while. The shellac will build up on the paper. Just keep running the same paper until the shellac and wax are gone for the most part. Then use a clean belt to sand the floor. You can burn though it with a couple of additional passes of the sander.

Thanks AustinFloorguy & Barquios- I'll stick with patience over chemicals.

Back in the day when bowling alleys were pulled with lacquer .. maybe 10 costs by the time they were resanded , we just used a open cut paper first to keep it from gumming up .. Agree with AF , chemicals are a bad idea , and messy.. he open cut paper will knock it out in a hurry ..