The past weekend was set aside to sand and refinish all the Oak and Fir floors.
I headed down to the local (and only) tool rental supply and picked up a fancy new floor sander and a few hundred sanding disks.
It was a shame that the previous owner had painted the fir floors with 5 coats of oil based paint.
5 coats of oil based paint to tackle
With this new sander it should take no time and I am sure all will turn out just perfect. How wrong I was, this machine is a combination of Beelzebub and Satin in disguise. I have happily used floor polishers in the past and as this is just a floor polisher with a sanding disk is should pose no problems.
Beelzebub
Satin himself looks so friendly until you turn him on
Well let me tell you, as soon as you start this puppy up it takes off like a 747 with a mind of its own, I ended up spinning in circles and destroying pretty well all the sanding disks with no results other than my arms being ripped out and nice swirl marks on the floor. Time to rethink this...
I loaded up the sander and headed back to the rental outfit, I had hoped to pick up their standard floor pad sander and edger, I knew that this may take longer but a much easier machine to use (apart from the fact that it weighs in at close to 160 pounds) anyways, I got the machine and started over again, much better results after 12 hours of sanding with the pad sander and my trusty DeWalt orbital sander, now I need to work on some corners and fill in some of the cracks and areas where the flooring has been damaged over the years.
The Good Guy
This machine works like a treat
Progress is being made
After 5 hours of sanding I am starting to like the results
Dining room and Living room close to being finished
A few sanding supplies were required.
Good thing I picked up a box of industrial dust masks
I hooked up a home made air extraction unit to try and keep the dust down, this sure helped during the main sanding process.
My trusty DeWalt sander has worked faultlessly, I have gone over all floors a couple times with this unit to get things really smooth.
I managed to get the cord jammed twice in the belt sander, I took this as a sign to take a break.
I headed down to the local (and only) tool rental supply and picked up a fancy new floor sander and a few hundred sanding disks.
It was a shame that the previous owner had painted the fir floors with 5 coats of oil based paint.
5 coats of oil based paint to tackle
With this new sander it should take no time and I am sure all will turn out just perfect. How wrong I was, this machine is a combination of Beelzebub and Satin in disguise. I have happily used floor polishers in the past and as this is just a floor polisher with a sanding disk is should pose no problems.
Beelzebub
Satin himself looks so friendly until you turn him on
Well let me tell you, as soon as you start this puppy up it takes off like a 747 with a mind of its own, I ended up spinning in circles and destroying pretty well all the sanding disks with no results other than my arms being ripped out and nice swirl marks on the floor. Time to rethink this...
I loaded up the sander and headed back to the rental outfit, I had hoped to pick up their standard floor pad sander and edger, I knew that this may take longer but a much easier machine to use (apart from the fact that it weighs in at close to 160 pounds) anyways, I got the machine and started over again, much better results after 12 hours of sanding with the pad sander and my trusty DeWalt orbital sander, now I need to work on some corners and fill in some of the cracks and areas where the flooring has been damaged over the years.
The Good Guy
This machine works like a treat
Progress is being made
After 5 hours of sanding I am starting to like the results
Dining room and Living room close to being finished
A few sanding supplies were required.
Good thing I picked up a box of industrial dust masks
I hooked up a home made air extraction unit to try and keep the dust down, this sure helped during the main sanding process.
My trusty DeWalt sander has worked faultlessly, I have gone over all floors a couple times with this unit to get things really smooth.
I managed to get the cord jammed twice in the belt sander, I took this as a sign to take a break.
Here was me thinking that I was close to finishing and ready to apply some nice finish coat, not so it seems, I meandered my way to the hardware store to pick up some wood filler as a few floorboards were in less that great shape, seems what I needed was a bucket of trowel on wood filler, you pour, spread and work this stuff in to all the nail holes and cracks. Once done this is the end result...
The already twice sanded floor filled and ready for more sanding !!
Some sanding progress being made
Sander used for this little sanding job, this filler sets like cement, I also had to go around and set each and every nail hole
It took close to 40 sanding disks to sand the entire floor, now on to the staining process.
My first step after cleaning all the dust from sanding was to apply 2 coats of WATCO Danish Oil Finish in a Golden Oak colour.
You can see here the first coat applied to the living room
This stain needs 72 hours to "set" before I can apply the first of 3 coats of ureathane, man this is a long process.
All in all a challenging exercise so far. Now on to cleaning and applying 3 coats of a water based Urethane. Wish me luck.
