I am buying my first home this month and it has hardwood floors that need to be refinished and it leaves me with questions. My plan is to sand all of the finish and stain off and start over. My questions are this. My brother has a Oreck Ultra Orbiter floor sander and my first concern is it doesn't have a vacuum and will it make clean up a disaster? Or will I be better off renting a floor sander with a vacuum? Also Oreck sells sanding screens at 60,80,100,120 grits. Will the 60 be aggressive enough to cut the finish off and at $10 a piece how many would I need to do 700 square feet. Also which grit should I finish with? I would step down 20 grit at a time to remove sanding marks. Any advice would help a bunch!


David

It would be best to hire a professional on a job of this size. To do this job you would need the following; rent a drum sander, edge sander, and buffer, a dust mop, vacuum, mineral spirits, stain finish, buffer, screens, sand paper for edger and drum sander, a carbide scraper, applicators, brushes, a file and a few other items. By the time you buy/rent all of this stuff you could just pay a few hundred dollars more to have a pro do it. Plus, staining wood floors and getting the stain even is probably the toughest thing to do as a wood floor finisher. We go do jobs all the time for people who went to all of this trouble only to then hire us to redo it, which ends up costing them about double. If you do want to do it yourself here is the sanding progression you need to use for good results; drum sand with 40, edge with 40 grit, drum with 60, edge with 60, drum with 80, edge with 100, buff the floor with 100 grit sand paper on buffer, buff again with 120 grit screen on buffer. Then you need to wipe the entire floor down with water to help raise the grain of the wood, which helps the stain take evenly.