This eBook will be cheap insurance when it comes to sanding your wood floors. This is a must read before you pick up that floor sander. It may save your floor from a fate worse than death. When pulling around that heavy floor sander, you need to think about gouging or sanding your floor unevenly, I will teach you how to make a perfectly flat floor. I will also teach you how to sand to ensure when you apply stain that it blends evenly. If you want to have a beautiful wood floor, you need to know how to sand extraordinarily well. Any mistakes you make will be highlighted on your once beautiful wood floor. I will not teach you the big box store “1, 2, 3 and you’re done” – this is a professional guide to sanding your wood floor. I will also teach you the inner workings of a drum sander. You will learn how to prepare your drum sander so that it won’t leave those dreadful chatter marks all over your living room floor. You will be able to select the right kind of sandpaper for the job – every job is different. When you work with your edger, you will know how to avoid those ugly roller marks. Most importantly, if you read this eBook, you will be able to do a perfect sanding job that will impress your family and friends.
Can it be Sanded?
I always start off by going over the whole floor on my hands and knees. This is only way to check an old floor for split boards and broken top grooves. I may find at this point that the floor is just too thin or damaged to handle the extensive sanding process that a stained floor needs. This is the time to decline a job. Before you end up with bad results, and every body blames each other. Just remember in all the small claims court cases that I have served as an expert witness, it was assumed that the floor mechanic alone had the expertise to determine if a floor could be sanded with good results.
Now if you are a amateur and have never done a stained floor before, and you think you are going to simply rent a floor sanding machine and sand the floor yourself, please consider this. I have another (free) article that discusses in detail whether you should consider doing this rather difficult job yourself. You might instead, hire the pro to do the floor sanding only. Have a professional follow the prep for staining as I will describe in this article. If he won’t do all the details I mention, do the final vibrator and buffer sanding yourself (and this you CAN do, and they do rent good equipment for this).
This way you can be sure that all the proper steps were taken to prepare your floor for the wood stain. This article will be cheap insurance really. You will know exactly what to look for after a floor is sanded, (before you pay) so as to avoid even this contractor leaving machine marks. Might have him read this article, so that he knows, you know. A proper “sand only” job will cost about a buck a square foot or less.
A well sanded floor will be a breeze to stain and finish, and this article will save you from hiring the wrong contractor. I do have another article on how to stain a floor, and another on how to apply polyurethane to a floor. These tasks are often done better by the knowledgeable amateur as opposed to the so-called pro who is in a hurry to make money.