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weedyacres

Floor frustrations-how to clean up these old hardwoods?

weedyacres
10 years ago

X-posting this to Old House

We've taken a floor sander with 20-grit paper to a couple floors, and we're not getting the results we hoped yet.

Kitchen floor: I steamed off 2 layers of linoleum and adhesive. After sanding, there are some areas of discoloration that aren't coming out with tons of sanding, including hand sanding with an orbital sander.

Bedroom floor: Under carpet, this was the original hardwood in decent shape. But sanding gums up the 20-grit paper without taking it off. Other stuff (residual paint, adhesive) is coming off, but the sandpaper quickly gums up.

Any tips for getting either of these off? We're thinking we might need to rent a drum sander, though it's labor day weekend and the local rental places are closed, so that throws a wrench in things.

The plan is to put a Bona Sealer over the bare floors and then Bona Traffic poly.

This post was edited by weedyacres on Sun, Sep 1, 13 at 10:07

Comments (6)

  • GreenDesigns
    10 years ago

    You'll go through a lot of paper with pine. It has a lot of resins. Hand sanding is sometimes actually better because you don't create as much heat buildup. 20 grit is pretty aggressive to start with too. I'd never go under 40.

    If you choose to go the drum sander route, I'd recommend getting the pro that needs to go with it also. A drum sander on pine can very very quickly take you down below the tongue. It's a hard beast to deal with even on a relatively hard floor. On a soft floor, it's a disaster in waiting.

    You can try a bit of an oxalic acid bleach on the discolored spots and see what it does. Mostly, old floors like that are an "appreciate the patina" type of acceptance, or else you are someone who will want to replace them.

  • glennsfc
    10 years ago

    Those water stains will likely be impossible to remove. But, you will not discover that until you hit it with the belt sander. However...you can test for stain "density" by taking a very sharp scraper to the stained area and planing off some of the wood. If there is no change and the stain is still visible after doing that, then it is likely the staining is deep.

  • weedyacres
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thanks for your suggestions on chemicals and warnings against drum sanding. I went shopping Monday morning for chemicals, and in the meantime Mr. Weedy made faster passes on the floor with the sander to avoid heating up and globbing the shellac or whatever was on the floor.

    Results: Denatured alcohol did nothing. I tried wiping with a rag, scrubbing with steel wool, flooding a small area and letting it sit, all with no results. Guess it's not shellac.

    I then tried lacquer thinner. Scrubbing with a rag seemed to have an effect, so I did a fairly large area. Once it dried, however, there was minimal results, and less so on the unsanded wood than sanded. I tried it in one of the bedrooms that had a single sanding pass, and quit once I started feeling a little stomach cramping. :-) Yes, I had the windows open and a fan going. Sanding that didn't seem any different from the area I didn't apply the lacquer thinner.

    Didn't try the mineral spirits yet. In the meantime Mr. Weedy had sanded one of the bedrooms about 18 times with 60 grit (seemed to create more dust than 20 grit), and made headway. I took an orbital sander with 40 grit to the spots left behind (slightly deeper grooves/dents) and here's where we're at:

    Bottom left corner is where I hand sanded.

    Lowe's had no oxalic acid, but we've got some in our garage 100 miles away, so we'll work on the kitchen again later.

    Also, in the meantime, we used a belt sander on the mosaic inlay portions to get off the lippage, machine sanded over it to even out the belt sander marks, and then chipped away with a hand sander to get the residual off. This shows what our eventual goal is, but it'll be dozens of hours if we have to hand sand off this finish.

    I've done some more googling and may try citrus strip or Formby's furniture restorer to remove the finish.

    We've also got this area that had tile over it. The thinset seems to have bleached out the wood where it touched, but even aggressive hand sanding is having a tough time evening out all the discoloration.

    I'm still very open to additional suggestions to attack this.

    And I must say that I now know the answer to the question, "why would anyone cover up hardwood floors?" Anyone who asks has never personally refinished them. :-)

  • gregmills_gw
    10 years ago

    Aside from Glennsfc idea with the scrapper to test the stains theres not much more to do besides bleaching and thats not necessarily going to give you the results some might hope for.

    Minerial spirits personally i dont think will do much. Laquer is stronger and you saw the results with that.

    My two cents is dont break your back. If a drum sander cant take tge stains out in less than 4-5 passes you should start thinking about if you live with the stains or start thinking about staining the floor to minimalize the appearance of stains

  • weedyacres
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    greg: for the record, we didn't use a drum sander, based on everyone's warnings against using them on soft wood. It was just a regular vibrating sander with a rectangular pad.

    I was originally planning on staining, but also got warned off of staining pine. I'm perfectly fine with "character marks" but I think of that more like dings and scratches in the underlying wood, not stains. But then I think "is anyone going to notice all the imperfections in the coloring or whatever once there's furniture everywhere?" As long as they compliment my inlays I'll be good. :-)

    And this is only a $60,000 house, once fixed up.

    If all else fails on the kitchen, and I can't make the water stain unnoticeable, I suppose I can always paint it or something.

  • gregmills_gw
    10 years ago

    Ok. Sounds like you have a good expectations. Sometimes people who have heavily stained floors wont accept the fact that they might not be able to get them out.

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