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diy refinishing oak floors
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Posted by nywvblue (My Page) on Sun, Feb 7, 10 at 11:47
| My 86-yr-old oak floors are in good shape but the existing finish (probably original to the floors) is dull and gray, chipping and peeling, and I can easily scrape it off with a putty knife in places. I wonder if there are any experienced souls out there who might have taken on the challenge of resurfacing their own floors themselves and what you might advise.... I don't want to sand the wood, just get the finish off -- or cleaned up -- then apply new coats of poly.
(I wish I could attach a photo showing my floor's condition but, as a newbie, haven't figured out how to do that yet!)
Thank you for your help! |
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RE: diy refinishing oak floors
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When you see a gray, peeling finish, it usually means poly went on over wax or shellac. This time, do a thorough job of cleanup, or you could get the same result.
I just never use poly on floors in old houses. Poly can't be renewed, it needs to be removed. Poly is traditionally removed by sanding; Sanding destroys flooring. The fabric of the floor is being removed. Sanding can only happen so many times until the wood is too thin.
As part of my preservation ethic, I have been scraping wood floors for years.
Get a 1 1/2" paint scraper with a steel blade. Learn how to use a file to get it really sharp, and keep it sharp. It's common to need to resharpen every 12 to 20 strokes. If you are pulling nice curly shavings, you are doing it right. If you are chattering, shrieking or just getting dust, you don't have it right. You may think a scraper that size is too narrow/slow; well, you can't apply enough pressure PSI with anything wider. It heeds to bite the finish and the wood to do its job, and any wider and you would need to be the Hulk to push hard enough.
Hint: when you sharpen the scraper, you want to round the blade over slightly so the corners don't dig in. Dig in = uneven job, more material to remove to get it right.
Scraping is also the only way to go on a wide-plank floor. You can retain the pre-existing cupping/ crowning of the planks, without sanding the whole thing flat. A sander works by taking down the high spots; scraping by hand and eye, you can decide what is finished and what needs more work irrespective of the high/low spots of the floor. You take off as needed, where needed. A well-scraped floor will need a bit of light sanding to get rid of fuzz and irregular edges. A pass with a random orbital sander with 180 grit will yield a very smooth, furniture-like surface, and bring out much more grain than the typical floor sanding which only goes to 100 grit.
Scraped floors really look alive.
This 1840's wide-plank heart pine floor was scraped and hand-sanded last summer.
 The finish here was waterlox, which is pretty spectacular on old wood with 180 grit finish.
Casey |
RE: diy refinishing oak floors
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So sanding removes wood from the floor and there for weakens its fabric.....but scrapping nice long curls of wood does not?
Often houses of the age your speaking of do have thin (5/16") floors that are difficult for an amateur to sand. A safer bet would be to strip, coat with a no wax shellac and finish. The no wax shellac is to allow proper bonding in case old wax or other contaminates are left behind. |
RE: diy refinishing oak floors
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Sanding removes wood indiscriminately, while hand scraping is totally under control of the artisan. A drum sander flattens the floor beginning with the high spots. If you stop just at the point when the high spots are brought to level, you will have a striped floor, because there is still patina layer left in the previous "valleys"; then the only way to get into pink (fresh) wood is to keep on sanding until the valleys are dressed down. With a 12"-14" wide plank, it could have had 1/4" of cupping, which means that no less than 1/4" will be removed from the peaks by the drum sander, before the valleys can begin their sanding. At such time, you are right down to the T&G's.
With scraping all of this is avoided. The oxidized patina is evenly retained, and you have an antique floor that still has original character and color, but is prepped for whatever finish you'd want, which hopefully would not be poly.
Casey |
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