Owning your own home

It depends how good a job you want.

Ours is a bit rough in places and not that even as we were trying to remove a deep dark wood stain. However, ours are wood tiles so we were weighing up <£200 all in to improve the look of our downstairs vs £2k for new flooring when we moved in.

Young kids have fuck it anyway so I don't care that it's not as good as it could be, and I'm glad we spent very little on it.

My tips don't relate to technique, but the dust management:

• seal off every room with two
  plastic dust sheets in a door/curtain to create an air lock style system. If you've got stairs put them at the top and bottom.
  
• Cover your hair
  
• use two of those black o-rings you can see in your pic holding the bag and always change the bag early. Having a bag break is a massive PITA
  

Famous last words ;) FWIW, did the upstairs of our 3 bed house and it took us a weekend to do the main bedroom and box room and my back was destroyed by the end. I don't think I've ever sweated as much.

It takes hours and hours to get a good result as you need to be patient and to through all the different grits when you've done a good enough job on the previous one. Don't under estimate how long the prep can take.

Also, hire sounds cheap initially but adds up really quickly with all the accessories and belts you'll need to buy. Ended up costing us £450 to do ourselves for a weekend.

I'm happy that I've done it and know what it's like but wouldn't want to do it again. I'm personally going to be giving Zen a call for the living room downstairs.

(Fuck that edge sander)