Refinishing Hardwood Floors

When the hardwood floors start to look a little worn and their colors fade away, it is the when you should think about refinishing hardwood floors. Refinishing hardwood floors is not an easy task; it’s complicated and takes a lot of effort to meet the perfection. But you can still succeed in refinishing hardwood floors if you have professional knowledge and skills.

Refinishing hardwood floors result in a long life of your flooring and it also revives the colors. Here is a detailed walkthrough that will help you in efficient completion of refinishing hardwood floors.

First Step for Refinishing Hardwood Floors - Sanding the Floor

Sanding is the best option, and the most essential one, to start refinishing hardwood floors. For this purpose, you need to clear your room where you would be sanding the floor, removing everything out of it including the furniture and the rugs. The floor must be clean and clear of any kind of objects. Even a single nail or staple can disturb the entire process of refinishing the hardwood floor as they rip the sandpaper, ultimately damage the sheet.
It’s better to get a floor sander on rent from any of the home stores that offer such equipments on rents. You can buy it if you want to but that is not going to be a very appreciable decision as you don’t need floor sander most of the times. Moreover, you need to thoroughly study the instruction manual.
When you are using the floor sander for refinishing the hardwood floors, keep it in constant motion and avoid working on the same spot for long because a floor sander works really fast and it can quickly spoil the flooring if you keep it to one spot. Therefore, you need to keep it moving all over the floor, making sure that it doesn’t govern any change to a particular spot.
You will also need to have a good range of sandpaper that can fit your machine. Get an adequate quantity because rental stores take back unused sandpapers. Otherwise, you might suffer any delays during the process of refinishing hardwood floors.
Moreover, you also need to make sure that you do not run the sander in opposite direction of wood’s grain. Doing so will create problem and you won’t get expected results from this procedure of refinishing hardwood flooring. On the other hand, running the sander in the direction of wood grains will result in smooth performance. So, it is better the keep the sander in constant motion when refinishing hardwood floors.
You need to use heavy-grit sandpaper in the beginning but once the hardwood floor is fully sanded, use light-grain sandpaper and sand all the scratches and lines that you find on the floor. If they are stubborn, sand them again. And keeping changing the sandpaper from heavy to low-grits which start from 30, 60, and 80 to 100 grits.
If you can’t reach the edge of the hardwood floor using your sander, you can use an edging machine. You need to make sure that the entire hardwood floor is sanded properly.

Refinishing hardwood floors just takes as much effort as that. You can do it alone without hiring any professional and it is not very difficult if you have a proper knowledge of the tools as well as the procedure for refinishing hardwood floors. You can also stain the hardwood flooring for extra protection, which takes place before finishing the floors.