Sanding and Refinishing Floors

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Full disclosure: I had nothing to do with this project. I was super pregnant and our daughter was almost two years old during this time. Anytime I mention “we” I’m referring to my husband and his friend who helped with this.

Refinishing our floors was the first big project we wanted to do in our house before we moved in, and my husband was so ready to get this project going that he started pulling up the carpet within an hour of closing on our home. A project like this seems pretty straightforward and simple, but don’t let that fool you. The process wasn’t difficult and the steps are easy to follow, it’s just unbelievably time consuming; especially if your “crew” is two guys with day jobs who are only able to work on the house in the evenings (and sometimes into the early mornings).

There are hundreds of solid tutorials online that go into great detail about sanding and refinishing hardwood floors, so instead of doing another one of those, I’m just going to keep it simple, and hit the highlights— think of this as the Cliff’s Notes version (if that’s still a thing). I’ve also included a few tips we learned along the way.

So, if you’re a stubborn DIY-er who’s tired of all the carpet in your home, this is for you.

Step 1 (After Pulling Up All the Carpet): Remove all tack strips, glue, and/or staples.

Carpet padding is either glued or stapled to the floor. We’ve pulled up the carpet in two different houses, and encountered both scenarios. In the hallway at our old house, the carpet padding was glued and then stapled. That project took years off my life.

To scrape up the glue, you can use any kind of scraper or putty knife, just try not to gouge the floor. This is your house and you have to live with it, but you’ll also probably want to sell it at some point in the future, so just be careful.

To remove staples, you can use a flat head screwdriver to lift the staple up and the needle-nose pliers to pull it out. There will be hundreds of staples, don’t get in a hurry. Just take your time and be sure to get every single staple and nail out of the floor. If you miss one, you will definitely find it later with your sander. Depending on the size of the space, this could easily take several hours. See what I mean? Time consuming.

Step 2: Remove “Pet Stains” (if there are any)

For your sake, I hope you don’t encounter this issue, but if you do happen to pull up your carpet and discover mass amounts of old animal pee like we did, you can follow this tutorial to remove the stains with baking soda and hydrogen peroxide.

Step 3: Patch the floor where needed

The floor in our house had two poorly patched in holes (they both looked like they were floor furnaces at one time) that needed to be redone.

This is one was previously filled in with a piece of plywood:

My husband called this technique “feathering in,” as you can see, that just means that he cut every-other floor board a little farther out, and at varying lengths, so he could stagger the new boards. This makes it much less noticeable.

The floor furnace in the hall wasn’t patched in very well before, either:

The purpose of feathering in the boards is to prevent having a noticeable square in the middle of your floor like this one.

Steve ripped up the wood, and made this one look a lot better too:

Step 4: Cover Everything

This is the last thing you will do before you start sanding. You’ll need to cover everything in plastic sheets, because as soon as you start sanding, saw dust is going to be everywhere. Be sure that you cover all the air vents. You do not want to get saw dust in those.

Step 5: Sanding the Floor

This part is zero fun. We rented a drum sander for the majority of the floor and used a belt sander around the edges of each room. There’s actually a sander that’s called an “edger,” specifically for this, but the belt sander worked fine. The floor has to be sanded three times (starting with 40 grit, then 60-80 grit, then 100 grit) So this is technically 3 steps in 1.

This is a very labor intensive process. Steve and his good friend Matt (who we will literally never be able to repay for his help) worked their rear ends off to get this finished.

Side note: Always work with the grain of the wood. Always. Even around the edges. Resist the temptation to be lazy. Just go with the grain.

Step 6: CLEAN, AND THEN CLEAN AGAIN

This is the last step before the stain goes down, and it’s extremely important. The floor has to be as clean and dust-free as possible before you stain. No one wants tiny dust particles stuck in their stain forever, so be sure to sweep, swiffer, and tack cloth every single room.

If you don’t know what tack cloth is (because I had no idea), this is it:

Step 7: Stain

As shown in the pictures above, some of the “pet stains” that were mentioned previously were more difficult to remove than others. Because of this, we decided to go with a darker wood stain for the floors. We chose “Kona” by Rust-Oleum.

Be sure to evenly coat the entire floor, and work in small sections so you don’t leave it on too long before you go back and wipe it up.

Step 8: Polyurethane

THE FINAL STEP! But it’s another one of those steps that’s actually several steps in one. Fun, right?

This is what we did:

1. apply a coat of polyurethane and let it dry

1. sand the whole floor with super fine grit sandpaper (220, I think).

1. go over the whole thing again with tack cloth, and finally

1. apply one last coat of polyurethane

Here’s what the finished product looks like!

Our time frame ended up being about 2 weeks (maybe a little less) for this project. This included pulling up the carpet/tack strips/staples, treating the pet urine stains, patching the floor, then sanding and refinishing the floor. Steve and Matt worked at the house every evening after work and then two full weekends. This was probably Steve’s last time refinish wood floors. Personally, I think he did an amazing job with them.