Home DIY

I’ve put white K-rend in white on my new extension, and it’s cool to the touch in the heat of the sun, whereas small bits of brick are uncomfortably hot to the touch.

It is rather blinding though.

Now I know why floor sanders exists. Unfortunately, the long grain of the boards going across a tiny room mean I'd only be able to sand about a quarter of the floor with one. I give my sander another hour before it burns out.

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Is that taking a layer of varnish off with it? Wonder if there would have been mileage in drowning it in stripper and scraping the really gunky stuff off first.

Had this when I did our hallway. Did it with a makita belt sander, and tried to do the edges with a random orbit. Ended up hiring and edge sander - made a big difference.

Probably, but that would have been a messy old job and gappy floorboards would mean it dripping through onto god knows what. It's a tiny tiny room. I'll just suffer it.

I feel your pain having spent hours, then days sanding back our deck and feeling like I've got nowhere.

If I ever find the cunts who painted it poo brown there will be blood

When I hired sanders to do the spare room, I HATED the edge sander. Might have just been the one I got but it you stopped moving for a split second, it burned the wood. And the guard didn't rotate freely so it properly fucked the skirting. I actually got on much better with the big floor belt sender and a RO.

The slowest thing about this is waiting for the sander to cool down every 5 min. I'm probably about 1/6th of the way through in half an hour though. And this is the worst pass. Varnish, player, paint, high/low spots. A 40 grit belt seems to be the job though.

Another issue is trying not to drip sweat on the sanded boards!

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Oh man, I feel your pain.

It could be worse. The Henry means it's more or less dustless, compared to the last room I did.

Going two boards a time. About 15 min a pass now.

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TBF, I also hated it, just hated it slightly less than trying with a RO. They're beech boards as well, so they needed some properly welly to get them flat. Wish I'd just bought a rotary sander tbh. Edge sander was also fucking useless with my extractor plugged in too - filled the house with dust

Fucked

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Good effort! Hope the edges aren't going to be too much of a pain to do.

Oh they will be!

Out of interest - are you in London? I had a notion you may have been in NI.

From NI, live in London.

Ha. Had you still been here I have a number of a guy who could have done your floors! Top man and not hard to pay either! Pity …

A bigger room and I would have hired a sander (did so for the spare room). This one is just not big enough.

Guy from Lisburn did our living room and - NO DUST!! Great job on maple floors. The lack of dust amazed me. I have been looking for a pic I took at the time.

Took me a while to find this pic. This is the dust from our floors. Black stool seat.

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Cordless RO sander was a no go, batteries kept overheating and shutting down. Nipped out and bought a corded one and a fuckton more discs. Should have hired an edge sander. This is no fun. Still, have way through the edges.

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The lack of dust amazed me

We had a floor of our place done recently and I couldn't believe how little dust they generated. Ours had some big fancy Festool unit.

Good work @stevo_com especially with that level of kit, but this is reminding me why although we're doing loads ourselves floor sanding was the one thing I wanted to get people in for based on past experience.

This is the finished job. The floors had gone yellow over time and had a number of marks and gouges. When it was put down we were told it could be sanded three times but that was 20 years ago. The guy who sanded them advised they could be done eight times now as the modern sanders are much more precise and don’t remove as much material. Happy days said me - I will be dead before it requires replacement 😁

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@Airhead - neighbour needs a small plaster patch job where the skim coat is coming away from the old plaster underneath. It's a small patch (about 300m diameter blob), what would you recommend? I was just gonna give the area a coat of watered down PVA and then use some multifinish plaster or Easifill. Is there a better filler I should use?