The Ins and Outs of Sanding Wood Floors

Some things are a bad idea no matter how you shake ’em. Government lobbying, TV shows involving supermodels, and pretty much anything involving a lot of helium balloons and lawn furniture. Oh, yes, and trying to refinish your own floors while your partner is off for the weekend.

Every once in a while, someone tries to do this to their fully furnished home and the result is not pretty. When you get done, you might end up buying yourself a new stereo, a new computer, phones and having nearly everything else you own, sent out to the laundry.

This is because floor refinishing, or sanding, produces pounds of extremely fine wood dust. So fine, in fact, that it will easily flow under unsealed plastic barriers and will effortlessly pour under or around doors. Rooms that didn’t seem slightly vulnerable can end up with a fine layer of wood dust on, and inside of, everything.

Part of the reason that this happens is that occupants and workers are often unaware of the amount that is floating in the atmosphere for hours after work had ceased and may open or remove barriers while the air is laden with this incredibly invasive stuff.

This is why just about the only task I will recommend be undertaken prior to moving anything into one’s new dwelling is the refinishing of wooden floors.  You just don’t want to see the results of this avoidable mess. Further, this is a job best left to professionals for a number of reasons that we’ll discuss.

Sanding wooden floors can improve their appearance greatly but it can also ruin them, permanently necessitating replacement in some cases but, more often simply ending in an plaintive effect that one gets to look at and live with for years on. Sanding is most often done using “barrel”-type sanding machines. These have a fat sanding roller that runs at very high speed and can create a wavy floor or gouge a trough in about a second or two of unattended operation. These machines have to be driven at a uniform speed with an appropriate level of grit by a skilled professional to obtain the sweet result we all want. I would much sooner see a homeowner attempt their own plumbing than to try to sand their own floors, though there are finer points to this argument I’ll save for later...
 

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