We (mainly Brandon) have been working to refinish the upstairs floors. Once all the painting was done, that was the next step towards being ready to move the girls’ furniture, books, and toys upstairs and be settled. We had a long weekend with the 4th of July so we thought we could get them sanded and prepped for stain, maybe even stained those days.
In order to prep the floors for sanding, I crawled over each board with a putty knife to locate any nails that either needed pulled up or pounded down. We also had to remove all the quarter round trim and those nails as well. And of course, lots of vacuuming and sweeping of dust from all the plaster repair work.
But our plans of sanding were quickly thwarted when the orbital sander continuously gummed up from the varnish. We had to get an orbital sander because the rental place with the belt sander was closed for the holiday. It was a long, frustrating day trying to figure out what our next steps were going to be. We tried using stripper to take the varnish off, but realized that was going to be way too labor and time intensive. We finally just had to give up the idea/goal of getting the floors sanded that weekend and regroup with different equipment on a different weekend.
So just this past weekend we were able to get a belt sander and it worked MUCH better. It was able to take the varnish up without gumming up. Brandon used a edge sander around the edges of all the walls which was not his favorite task. I used a scraper and mouse sander to touch up the corners. The green room’s closet was too small for the belt sander to get in, so we had to scrap up the varnish with a wire attachment on his cordless drill (we also did that along the walls). It was a very labor intensive project.
Once we had the first sanding done with the belt sander that was returned and he got an orbital again. It was easier to handle and got closer to the edges, so he went over the floor multiple times with varying grits of sandpaper to get a nice, smooth finish.
The sanding took a full weekend of work. Now we are going to wipe down all the ceilings, walls and trim to eliminate as much dust as possible. Then go over the floors again to look for any gaps in the boards that will mess up the stain application. THEN we will be ready to stain. The three front runners are in the picture. The floors upstairs are pine and took these stains completely different from the oak floors downstairs. So we will be using two different stains. Then the poly coat will go on and cure for several days. It was definitely a good idea to start upstairs and get some practice in before conquering the downstairs.
Can you guess which one we chose?