The steps involved in sanding wood floors

These days almost every person wants to have a hardwood floor in their houses. This type of floor looks very elegant and luxurious. But the problem is that it needs very high maintenance. Thus you should be ready to spend some time and money on it after every 2 years or so. It comes with an incredible benefit however that you can change or renew its look by refinishing. And the very first step to do that is sanding wood floors. This post is dedicated to the entire sanding process. You will get step by step instructions here.

Initial preparations

The first thing to do is to prepare the room and the floor as well as yourself. Seal the doors and windows with tape so than no dust enters the room as it can stick with the wet floor. You should nail down any loose block of woods to ensure smooth sanding. Then you need to gather all the equipments that you are going to need. This involves cleaning supplies, sandpaper, walk behind sander, hand sander, etc. The most important things are goggles, gloves, dust mask and ear protection. It is not a dangerous process but you should still be very careful when doing something for the first time.

Getting started

If the walk behind drum sander is ready to use you should get on with the work. On the other hand if the sander needs some preparations like feeding sandpaper then do that first. You can easily find details about that anywhere on the internet. When you are ready to get started do not forget to wear protection gear. Another thing you need to keep in mind is that taking the sander to the next wood block at an angle of 90° can damage the block. Thus you should try to keep a 45° angle throughout. So, you will have to sand the floor diagonally. This can be very difficult if you start without a plan. So according to the size and shape of the floor decide a particular patter that you will follow.

Finish the job

Once you are done with the drum sander, you can take a hand sander and take care of the spots you missed. The placed even hand sander cannot reach are for the sandpaper. Do not leave any spot and very careful go through the whole room twice or thrice. If you do this properly you are successfully done with sanding wood floors.