I need a "sanding hardwood floors for dummies" lesson.

I bought a home that was built in 1953. It has hardwood floors throughout the original part of the home. It was covered with berber carpet when I bought the home 4 years ago. I have recently pulled up all the carpet in the dining room and living room and thrown it out. I'm determined to have nice looking hardwood floors!

What kind of sander do I need to rent from home depot or Lowes to sand the floors with?

Find a Varathane EZV sander. It has three random orbit sanders rotating on a common center. It's the most agressive and safe DIY sander. The rental drum and belt sanders can easily damage your floors. The dust pickup on the EZV works well but needs to be emptied frequently. Do your self a favor and empty the bag out of doors. The dust is fine and hard to pick up. You'll need a random orbit or pad sander for the corners. A carbide tiped scraper and a shop vac will be handy to have on hand.

I've done three of my rental units with an EZV including one butchered by a previous owner with a rental drum sander. Getting out those gouges took a while but I'm pleased with the result.

Jan

Thank you very much for your help!

I'm new at this home improvement thing but I'm very interested in it and eager to learn how to do things myself.

Lets say you only have 430 sq ft,,,,,,,,,,,,,, can you use a palm sander or a belt sander if you want? Or am i way out there on this one?

I just did 520 sq. ft. using a 4 disc random orbital sander by U-sand from Home Depot (looked for the EZV, but couldn't find one near me to rent). I couldn't imagine doing this without a sander made for flooring. I did use a 5" orbital sander to touch up some spots, but overall I like the U-sand's ability to get up and close to the wall.

If you start early in the morning with this or a similar machine, you should be able to complete all phases of sanding sometime in the late evening depending on how quickly you master it and how deep you need to go into the wood. Assuming you use one of the random orbital floor sanders, I would recommend buying at least two, preferably three sets of the sandpaper of each grit, and starting with the low grit even if you have a soft-wood floor (I had douglas fir). You do not want to run out of sandpaper and need to hit the rental place for more while your machine is already being rented and should be in use rather than waiting for you to return from the store.

One more note, if you decide to screen your floor between coats, I would recommend renting the buffing machine and screens to try before you return the sander back to the store. In my experience, with a high grit screen (180) and a relatively light orbital buffer (13" by Clarke), I was sanding into the wood after my sealer was applied. I gave up on the screens, and bought some of the disc buffer pads used for buffing linoleum commercial floors. If you go to a janitorial supply store, they usually have enough grades to chose from to get a more abrasive buff compared to some less abrasive buffs. Some try using steel wool too. I tried it, and didn't find that it worked any better than the buffer pads, and additionally created loose wires that were getting into the floor which were a pain to remove with a vacuum, and suposedly harmful to those who use a waterbase polyurethane since steel remnants from the steel wool can create rust.. If I had more time, patience, skill, or the ability to learn the screening process through an experienced finnisher, the screening process may have worked better for me.

Good luck!

Thanks for your reply!

So if a full day with proper equipment,,, 4 days without? ,,,,,,,,,,,, I understand. I'll take you advice and go with the U Sander. I was just affraid to chatter the floor ,,,,,,, plus i have alot of small areas over 430 sq ft i was wondering if a large peice of equipment would be usless in small areas.

But I'll just get the sander!

Regarding chatter marks, I had some "swirlies" or spiraling rings with the 120 grit paper from using the U-sand. Remember, the U-sand comes only in 24, 36, 40, 80, 120, and buffer pad grits. When I noticed the "swirlies", I dropped back to 80 grit to sand them out and returned to the 120 grit for refinishing those areas specifically. I have read that the "swirlies" are caused by moving the machine too rapidly from one area to another. I found this to be true and adjusted my sanding practices after this.

Please consider that I had douglas fir (a softwood) and you might need more time to sand your floor if the existing finish and wood is more resistant to sanding than mine was (e.g. oak). Also, if you have deep scratches you wish to remove, you may have to go over an area a little longer than other areas to remove the scratches.

Regarding small areas, I did three closets (3'x5', 2'x 3', and 5'x4' respectively) and had little trouble getting the U-sand into the spaces and right up to the wall. Please note that I did decide to remove all the 1/4 round at the baseboards so that finish would come out nicely in the end and the 1/4 round would cover the wall/floor interface.

Other tips:
1. The machine has wheels to move it around, but I preferred moving the machine to another location by running it while sanding and patiently moving the sander to the future location. Rolling the sander left marks on the floor which I tried to avoid.
2. I had a badly stained room (from cats) which left the wood darker in some areas. This was evident when I sealed, but since this room was going to be used infrequently, and never by guests, I was okay with the result for this room specifically. The cats apparently damaged the room beyond repair and the wood should be replaced if I was looking for best results. I did however follow the recommendation on this board to go over the wood after the final cut of 120 paper with a cloth and mineral spirits. This brought out and accentuated any scratches or discontinuities with the sanding which I would want to address before I moved onto the sealer. This also highlighted the cat stained areas of the wood that helped me visualize what the finished sealed and poly'ed end product would look like. Note that the cat stained areas darkened during the sealing process more than the unstained parts. You might say that the sealer accentuated the spots. The takeaway here is that the mineral spirits step helped set my expectations for the quality I was going to get in the end and let me go back to the sander before going forward with the finishing steps if I didn't like what I saw and was able to fix it by sanding.
3. The higher I went in grit size (less coarseness), the more I noticed that the sander was "gripping" onto the floor. This made sense since the higher grit would have more contact surface area per pad than the lower grits. I was therefore more patient with the machine at the higher grits and let it take me in a certain direction if it was resisting my control.
4. Now that I am done with the sanding, I would say that most of the time was spent on the course grades of paper until you are clearly seeing the wood and getting rid of the previous finish. The 80 and 120 grits are more for going over the wood and smoothing the surface. I hope pros would confirm or refute my opinion of this step. Again, I am a beginner at best.
5. If I rented the machine for the week, I would have done the buffing between poly coats with it and not rent the buffer machine.
6. To have the U-sand "dig" into the wood when you find a difficult spot using the coarse grits, I would place one foot on the back corners of the machine to help that pad dig in. I would also sometimes go to the side of the machine, put one hand on the normal handle and the other on the steel bar in the front of the machine to get more leverage and force the machine into the floor to get at a certain specific spot. I am sure this advice is not in the manuals and there are probably 1000 reasons not to do this where experience would tell otherwise. It did however work for me, but again, I only did this in isolated spots and not very often of course. I also switched back and forth on using different sides of the machine to promote even wear on the paper.
7. For your size space to sand, I would recommend getting four sets of 24 and 36 size paper, three sets of 40 grit, and 2 each of the 80 and 120 grit sizes. It is always easier to return unused extras than have a trip to the store interrupt your work.
8. Do not forget to get a scraper for the corners. Unless you have a circular room without door jams and molding, this is critical for a quality end product where the sander can not get to.
9. For walls, you can push the u-sand right into it and drag it along the wall. The dust guard helps guide it in this case. If you do not take off the 1/4 round, this will be much more difficult to accomplish.
10. I did use a dust mask but was not experiencing a lot of sawdust from the sanding process.
11. Every once in a while during the use of the coarse paper, your finish might bead up on the paper and form little discs. This hurts the cutting power of the sander. To remove these discs, take the paper off the machine and gently roll the paper with your hands. The discs should pop off and should be discarded. They might need some encouragement to do so with a utility knife with a gentle pry. Try not to remove the backing paper on the sandpaper though.

For a sand between coats you can use a pole sander. You can find a pole sander in the wall board section of your local big box. It's low tech but very easy to control and surprisingly fast. At $13 or $14 a pole sander is cheap and you can use it on your wall board projects.


Jan