Well, I finally wrapped up the floor project that first brought me here about 6 weeks ago. Briefly, I had a 12×13 ft BR with a somewhat darkened and damaged old growth fir floor that I wanted to clean up before the room was occupied again. I didn’t have much luck finding information on doing this since nearly all resources are dedicated to hardwood floors, and as will be evident in pictures I will post, the previous people really did a number on this floor with a drum sander. But I found good information in this forum, especially from Ditch, who even got a phone call from me when I was at the appropriately titled “panic” picture stage. But he talked me through it, as well as some difficulties in getting the sanding sealer and poly down. I had to work this project around a labor day vacation and whims of a pregnant wife, so things didn’t always go to schedule. I’m glad it stayed nice and warm this Fall since we’ve had windows open and fans running since the first coat went down. I’ll hopefully have four pictures to accompany this, being titled before, panic, sanded, and poly. The pictures may end up over in photo gallery once I figger out how to do it. 😉
In before, we see the floorwith deep rich colors. On the left we can see part of the U-Sand 4 disk orbital sander that Ditch recommended. The floor is slightly bowed, but not as much as the pic suggests. The old trim has been removed. The main damage to the floor was a long gouge along the left wall (not shown) where they let the drum sit and grind in at the end of a run, as well as a number of random gouges where i guess they were trying to remove something from the surface. These were annoying as they were mostly diagonal. Based on what I found in cracks, this floor had been painted green at one time. being a 1910 house, i wasn’t sure how much wood was left which made me pretty cautious.
In panic, we see where I am after about 5 hrs of sanding. I’m a little miffed at the rental company because they supply the sander with a box that contains 16 ea pads of 40, 60, 80, 120, and 180 grit paper. Well, the 40 grit was terrible. Hardly took anything off, but I didn’t know better. I called Ditch at this point because things were not looking good I ran through the 40 and went back to the store, but this time grabbed some 36 grit paper, different brand. major league improvement. The 36 paper took off twice as much material before it dulled. In a couple of hours I had taken off 80-90% of the chatter marks seen in “panic,” but there were still a number of marks, maybe 40-60, and the weekend was over and the machine had to go back.
Since the princess was away, I decided not to finish the floor without her approval, which, I didn’t get. So I rented the machine again, but this time started with the 36 grit paper and with a couple of sets of paper I had taken out all the damage that was prudent, so i switched to a couple of passes with 60, 120, and 180 to finish, which is where we stand in the sanded picture. You can see part of the groove along the left hand wall at the top of the picture, as well as a few of the remaining deep gouges on the right side. To get these out would require a 1/16th to and 1/8th inch material removal. I did use a 5″ randomw orbit to smooth the edges and add texture to the surface for the finishes. This is a pretty clear floor, maybe a half dozen 1/2″ or less knots in 150 sq ft. The few shallower discolored areas actually now blend in with the wood.
In poly, we see the floor with a still somewhat wet poly layer. The floor is much lighter than this picture indicates (compare yellow wall with yellow in before picture). As you can see, I’ve even finished the windows and painted the trim. Had to do something. The sanding sealer raised the grain a bit, but i managed to put down the poly pretty heavy for the first two coats and that filled in those grooves. They are visually apparent, but the surface is smooth. The heavy poly layers did create some bubble problems which had to be sanded off between layers. Ditch thought a lower, recently abraided layer might have been degassing, so I waited a full week between coats #2 and 3. I also improved my application technique somewhat between layers. For the final coat, I figured out how much needed to go down, and then applied 1/2 of that amount along each wall. Working back and forth with the applicator, I ended up with the right final coat with no bubbles.
I would like to give Ditch special thanks for staying with me through this. I haven’t done any fine woodworking in 20 years, and doing this floor was like restarting with a 12 x 13 ft tabletop. I can’t tell you how close I came to just buying carpet and covering up my FUBAR at the panic stage. I really do think that an article needs to be written on how to do fir floors, especially in a town where they are present in 10’s of thousands of houses.
As for what I really learned, as a newbie. Don’t rent tools until you plan to use them. I rented the sander the night before and for the first 15 hrs of the rental it just sat there. Ended up costing me 1, possibly 2 extra days of rental. For this machine, the rental places make their profit on the paper. But don’t skimp here. If I’d switched paper more often, at $4-5 per change, I likely could have saved an extra day of rental charges and of pushing the machine around. I anticipate redoing two adjacent rooms with about 1.5X the surface of the room I just did, and that will be done in one day but with alot more of the 36 grit paper. Still haven’t pulled the carpet so I’m not sure what shape the floors are in at the moment. As for the poly, lay out how much you expect to use on the floor on opposite sides, and then just keep moving back and forth to lay down an even spread. I ended up using a shallow “U” profile, since applying and removing the applicator created bubbles. I did about 1 new board on each complete cycle, and erased any signs of bubbles by sweeping over that area again. I don’t mean to suggest that I have it figured out, these were just a few of the pitfalls that I encountered which I’ll correct the next time. Oh yes, protect the baseboard with paper. This weekend I’ll be sanding it down some before finishing the painting in that room. 15 minutes with paper and tape would have prevented that job. For some reason, clear coats aren’t noticed like colored paint drops as you are screwing up.
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Wow! Looks purdy.