How to Sand Your Wood Floor

Sanding your wood floor is a mandatory task you have to do before refinishing or finishing your floor. Before you start sanding your wood floor yourself you must be aware that there are a few steps to follow in order to make you don’t ruin your floor. Sanding can be a tricky task to handle if you don’t have any experience.

Which Tools to Use?
There isn’t many tools required to sand your floor. You can rent a sanding machine (if you think you will be using it quite often you may want to buy one), an edger (a small sander you can use against walls). And finally a hand scraper for areas you can reach with the edger or the sanding machine. A nail set and a hammer will also be required to remove any exposed nails in the floor.

Belt Sanding
Before you start the sanding proces sink all the exposed nails in the floor. If you don’t do so they will damage the sanding machine.

Once you are ready you can start sanding, first use a 60-grit paper and sand with the grain on the floor. Doing it the other way round will cause important damage to your floor. Never let the sander still. You have to keep moving it around the room or it will sand ruts into the floor. This will be very hard to remove.

Once you have finish with the 60-grit you can use a 80-grit and finally move on to a 100-grit for a smooth finish.

Edger Sanding
Once you have finished with the belt sanding you’ll have to move on to the edger. It will help you sand the areas – especially next to the walls the sanding machine has missed. You have to keep the edger moving from back to front a bit like the sanding machine. First start with a 60-grit paper and then move on to 80-grit and after to 100-grit.

Hand Sanding
Corners are not accessible with large tools. That’s why you’ll have to use a hand scraper. This will enable you to reach tricky areas. Make sure the areas you’ve sanded with the edger and the hand scraper blend in nicely with the rest of the room.

Source: www.RafterTales.com