Re: Refinish wood floors
I'm with Relentless. I installed and sanded/finished hardwood floors professionaly for many years. It's difficult to get good results without the pro equipment, but there is a serious "slight of hand" with using the drum sander and edger. By that, I mean that it takes quite a while to develop the technique and if you don't have the knack for it, you will cause yourself problems. You will need to sand the cross grain marks of the edger to a point that you won't be able to see them with a bright light showing from the side. The edger can only cut in a circular pattern and if you don't get those sanding scratches up before you apply a new stain, your shoddy workmanship will make itself manifest and be immortalized for all observers to see in the future. So you'll have to work the grits from 80 - 100 - 150 - 180 and finish with 220. That's a LOT of work. As a general rule, when you apply a new stain, the darker the color of the stain, the more unforgiving the stain is about showing sanding scratches that you didn't get cleaned up. If you stick with very light colored stains, you can get away with a rougher surface and your boo boos won't show unless someone wants to get down on the knees and go over it with a magnifying glass. Minwax Provincial is a very forgiving stain, but on the last several floors I did, 3 were white oak and we used no stain at all. White oak looks fabulous without any stain. The others were red oak and I don't like to go stainless on red oak. It gets too bright and looks a little harsh. So I tone it down with Minwax Natural. It gives it a nice honey look and is very very forgiving of sanding scratches.<br /><br />Also, you said the floor is some 125 years old. Are you serious? Most floors I've ever done that age were pine. God I HATE pine! Regardless of wood, on any floor, beware of a floor that is old enough that porousity of the wood has become abnormal. Dry rot or other decay causes older wood to not want to sand evenly or take a stain evenly even though the floor may look perfectly sound at first inspection. Sometimes on old floors, you'll see large areas that are uneffected by father time, but then you'll run into an area where the floor appears to be sound but rot spores have eaten just enough of it away that it will gulp your stain down like greedy kids sucking free cokes. If you try to use a stain, you'll end up with dark places and light places and it will look like total trash. For that reason, on those occasions that I've actually agreed to refinish an antique floor, I explained in urgent terms that this job would NOT be a magazine show piece and whatever we had when we finished was what the customer would have to live with like it or not. I would NEVER EVER put any kind of stain on an old floor except Minwax Natural. Again if it was a white oak floor, I'd wouldn't even stain it at all. I'd put on a coat of Porter Twin Seal and 2 coats of satin poly. Sand each coat with 220 grit on a jitterbug enough to scuff up the surface for the next coat. Also, I use a 4" china brisle brush and I do NOT pat the side of the can like a painter does because that puts bubble in the finish that may or not flow out. I clean the brush with mineral spirits. Do NOT thin your sealer or poly. That's a NO NO. Use them straight out of the can.<br /><br />If the floor is relatively new, (say the house was built in the 50s) you shouldn't have these problems to as much of an extent. You can almost treat oak, maple, or other hardwoods, like a new floor. But if you've got a house that's 65 years plus OR has soft woods like pine, poplar, cedar, spruce or fir, save yourself a HUGE TRUCKLOAD OF GRIEF! Just bang in a new oak floor over the top. I know that poplar is considered a hardwood, but as far as flooring goes, treat it like a softwood.<br /><br />Pet stains, water under house plants and snow tracked in and then allowed to sit under carpet will turn any floor black over time. There is virtually no way to rid yourself of these stains without replacing boards. I have had some success with these problems with oxcalic acid but I needed to apply acid to the entire floor to get an even look and even then, it didn't completely rid the pet stains. Also, the urine that caused the original stain 50 years ago, will amazingly rerelease it's pungent peepee aroma when you hit it with a drum sander. Man, you gotta love it.<br /><br />If possible, post some pics and give us kind of an idea what you're up against. But personally, if I had a 100 year old house and I wanted wood floors, I'd call the old floor my new subfloor and bang in a new floor over the top.
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