How do I refinish a hardwood floor?
Monday, March 1st, 2010 at
2:29 am
I have hardwood floors under my carpet and I want to tear up the carpet and sand and refinish the floors. I need some help on what equipment online medicine without prescription I need, where to get it, what to do, etc. Basically every step, start to finish.
I’ll tell you how to do it. Everyone should have the experience. Next time you’ll hire a professional.
Professional floor refinishers use belt sanders, but amatuers shouldn’t. You’ll sand a hole in your floor. Instead rent a 15" floor machine used for buffing floors. The rental will include a pad holder. You will need to buy a black pad (color represents the agressiveness of the pad) and 4 or 5 sanding screens (80 or 100 grit). All of the above come from the equipment rental place.
Next stop is the hardware store where you purchase;
1 can denatured alcohol
1 14" lambs wool applicator with pole
1 package cheesecloth
1 package facemasks
100 grit sandpaper
1 sanding block
enough poly-urethane floor sealer for your application.
Make sure that any nails or tacks are out of the floor. Refinishing floors creates lots of dust so close and tape the doors and ducts.
If you’ve never used a floor machine, the trick is "raise right, lower left".
i.e. if you apply pressure to the handle the machine will move left, if you raise the handle the machine will move right. This is the place where you will want a friend with a video recorder, because the machine will drag you all over the room until you get the hang of it.
The pad holder attaches to the floor machine, the pad goes below it and the sanding screen below that. These machines work side to side, not front to back. Start in the center of the room and work out. When the screen starts to wear out turn it over and use till it’s worn out on the other side.
You will not be able to get all the way to the wall so you will need to do the edges with sandpaper and a block. An electric sander will work for this also.
After all the sanding is done, you have to get up ALL the dust. Sweep and vacuum and after you think you have it clean use the denatured alcohol and cheese cloth to get the floor really clean. Let it dry throughly.
Apply the poly-urethane with the lambs wool applicator. Long smooth strokes, slightly overlapping. Two or three coats at least 12 hours apart.
I’ve refinished my floors twice in the last 25 years,and next time I’ll follow my own advice and hire a professional.
Good Luck
Here is just one site you can have a look at.
http://www.ehow.com/how_1856_refinish-hardwood-floor.html.
Or you could just google , How to refinish wood floors
Yes, everything Nathan stated …..in addition you may need filler for cracks and steel wool for an even smoother finish (prior to the final coat of polyurathane).
Good luck it’s alot of work.