Glass Floor
Not too bad right? On this page I will outline the steps involved with refinishing my foyer hardwood floor.
My Wife and I own a really old house. (over 100 years old) We bought it a little over 3 years ago knowing that it had all the original hardwood floors under the lovely green shag carpeting which was thoughout the house. Having ripped up all the carpeting prior to moving into the house we did a real quick sand and finish of the floors to protect them. Room by room we have redone each floor at a time. The final hardwood floor was our foyer. Our main reason for leaving this room until last is that it is the central room of the house and to get get to any other room requires going through it. There are a total of 7 doorways leading into this room. Kitchen, master bedroom, stairway to upstairs, living room, front entrance, walk-in closet, and the dining room. This presented abit of a dilemma as we would not be able to access any of these rooms except for the kitchen, dining room and bathroom during the polyurethane process. So we slept on an air mattress in the kitchen while the polyurethan dried.
Here you see the floor with the “quick finish” from when we first moved in:
It can only look better from here.
Thinking that since it had such a thin finish it would be pretty quick and easy to just use a small handheld belt sander to sand it down to where we needed it. This is after a about an hour of work:
This is after about a day:
After all that wear and tear on my knees and countless sandpaper belts later we (My Wife) decided that a commercial drum sander would get the job finished faster. My reason for not renting one right away was that we had used one when we first moved in and it missed a lot of areas due to the floor being quite uneven. A result of its age, wear, installation etc. So here it is after going over it Alot of passes and sheets of sandpaper with the commercial sander:
We still had to go back with the belt & finish sander around the edges. Ugh, more sore joints.
Finally all sanded:
Something Very important is that you sweep and vacuum the floor so that you remove all dust which will make your efforts a complete waste of time. This is the floor after staining. We used Minwax warm Cherry stain.
After letting the coat of stain sit for about a 1/2 hour we wiped it off using rags than repeated the process once more. The length of time you let it sit will determine how dark your finished floor will be. Repeating the process ensures that no areas are missed.
Finally we coated the floor with Minwax clear fast drying polyurethane finish using a foam roller on a broom handle. After letting it dry until it was dry and no longer tacky we sanded the surface with 120 grit sand paper using our finishing sander. We repeated this process twice more leaving the final coat unsanded.
After all that we weren’t all that happy with the results. It just didn’t shine the way we wanted it to. So now was time for drastic measures. I poured the polyurethane on the floor direct fromthe can only spreading it out slightly with the foam roller to make sure all spots were even. After letting it dry for over 3 days we could walk on it. It was fully cured in about a week and a half where we could put furniture back in the room. While I’m sure this isn’t how the pro’s refinish floors it worked for us and at a much lower cost.
Here is the finished floor again:
Break down of costs:
Handheld belt sander with alot of belts: $50
Commercial drum sander rental with 9 sanding pads: $75
Minwax Cherry stain: 1 gallon $25
Minwax Polyurethane: 1 gallon $30