Home DIY

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owl
Sanding wooden floors. I know a number of people have done this recently with enviable results, so I was hoping to tap into that knowledge. I have a couple of questions - pics of my floor below.
1. It looks to me as if our floorboards have had some rather hideous orangey stain/treatment at some point. Presumably this will sand off? The floorboards look a bit ropey to me compared to some of the examples I can find but I assume it's still reasonable wood, can anyone see any reason not to sand them back?
2. We have three rooms and one long hallway that need sanding. There is no way we can do it all at once (there isn't enough other space to put shit to clear all the rooms) - happy to follow the general advice of getting the pros in, but is the experience so terrible (dust, mess etc) that you'd recommend doing whatever we can to do over the same period (i.e. clear out two of the rooms and get them done in one day, then spend the night moving everything into the newly sanded rooms from the others to allow those rooms to be sanded)? I assume we really want to treat them immediately after sanding so possibly add another day either side of the moving to allow that to happen? I think ideally we'd split the job up and do a few months apart, but if the mess and horror is going to be so extreme maybe that is a bad idea...
Cheers!

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M4xime in reply to @owl

Nothing wrong with doing it yourself to see what it's like, that's also what we did and now getting Zen to do the other rooms.

Floorboards look fine and in much better state than ours were. I'd say don't underestimate the amount of time it take to punch all of the nails in far enough and to put in the slivers if needed to close bigger gaps etc ...

Regarding dust, I was super impressed by how little dust the machines actually generated when we did it. So much so that for the next rooms I'm happy to paint the walls before doing the sanding.

Finally, don't underestimate how much the primer and lacquers cost if you go for the good stuff like Bona etc

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owl in reply to @M4xime

This is really helpful, thank you! When you say 'punch the nails in far enough' do you mean anything other than hammering so they're flush with the board? RE filling/fixing, I'm not looking for perfection here, there are no massive gaps and I sort of just want the scratched-to-fuck orangey-ness gone and for it to look like a reasonable wooden floor. Do you think fixing/filling is necessary. Also hoping to get a puppy next year so it's likely to get fucked again anyway.

Similarly somewhere said you had to replace cracked/split boards. I have a few, but they still feel entirely solid, anyone know if I definitely have to swap them out or just advisable for perfection? Pic below.

And re primer/lacquers, what is the usual advice? I see some people online proposing multiple coats of stains, sealants, lacquers and top coats. That seems like quite a lot. I just want something natural, definitely not weirdly orange like the current situation and - because puppy - hard-wearing would be good.

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