You don’t need to completely sand them, just remove the gloss from the old finish. – Mottling or Bruising – Refinished fir floors often exhibit another characteristic called mottling or bruising. Look no further I specialize in residential Sanding and Refinishing and... Read More. Fir is definitely not the kind of flooring to practice your sanding skills on. It’s a big job that creates big disruptions in your household. Our Douglas fir floors have a hardness of 660 pounds force. Douglas Fir Flooring, white wood floors are prefinished and white washed. Even if you have the budget for it and can take a vacation while the work proceeds, your floor may not be a good candidate for sanding. You … I’ve been told that the big drum sanders would cause too many ‘ripples’ for an inexperience person, such as myself. That works out at around £17/m². I’ve helped hundreds of homeowners—some of them complete DIY novices—successfully prep their floors for a new … If that sounds like you ? Before Here is what they looked like before we got start Now we want to replace the slate kitchen floor, with wood but it has a large opening/transition … Fir flooring was finished with varnish, and then covered with area rugs. Sand … Douglas fir logs that are quarter-sawn yield … We manufacture the highest quality Fir and Alder wide plank flooring available from only salvaged or sustainable harvest local timber on the West Coast’s beautiful Gulf Islands, we control the entire process from raw log to … Saving what you got rather than going in debt on all new floors and all the extra’s that come with it ! When we think of quality Douglas fir flooring, we often consider only what’s on the surface – the finish, the stain, the arrangement of boards. This should effectively take care of the issue, but you may want to sand the entire floor to make it smooth. Naked Floors Wide Plank Engineered Douglas Fir Wood Floors are produced from Scandinavian Douglas Fir and traditionally finished with a unique Sandinavian method of achieving White Washed Wood Floors. Locate a Hidden Area for Testing . Before, During and Finished sequence… Pine Floor Refinished ... Great work from New England Floor Sanding! Hardwood Floor Sanding DIY Instructions. Start off gently. This type of sanding will level minor unevenness left by the drum sander and edger as well as buff away sanding scratches. Sanding it and refinishing it is also a great way to make a lively update to the rest of your home. You don't want to gouge the floor. Apply 1 coat of Bona Novia (Satin). The rotary cut of the edger is the most aggressive cut of all the floor sanding machines; knowing how to keep the scratch pattern with the grain as much as possible minimizes edger swirl marks. Sand the pine flooring with 120-grit sandpaper. Ideally, you should test the bleaching mixture in a small hidden area of the flooring before you bleach the rest of the floor. Sanding a fir floor. After that, rotary buff with a 120 screen. Stain will highlight the grain patterns and also highlights any marks from the edger so make sure everything is handsanded as needed to remove the swirls. Which method you choose will have a profound result on the quality of the wood. Putty nail holes from carpet (tack strip). Old Fir Floor. Floors in porches are exposed to more sunlight and more water than any … Sam and Mike refinished my pine floor with a satin finish and the outcome was amazing. How to Maintain a Fir Floor; Site Sanding; Welcome to Ecofir Floors. Luckily, you have options other than … Cost of sanding floors How much does it cost to sand a wooden floor? So you’ll want to perform the … Sanding hardwood floors might seem like a pros-only project. I’m going to … Introducing our floor-sanding expert. For example, if you’d like the finish grit to be 80, your sequence can be 36-50-80. To soften the cut of the abrasive, there are edger pads that are used under the bolt … Two rooms were Previously finished when we bought the home. (again I left it overnight). 604-377-5385. However, the most important step in ensuring the ideal product is the first one: cutting the boards from the log itself. Sanding hardwood floors is a big, messy and expensive job, and there you have three good reasons to avoid doing it. After 130 years, we're not surprised that your floors need work. Also, if you choose to stain the floor, it may get blotchy so consider using a sanding sealer to help even out the stain. But for the smoothest finish, sand the floor VERY lightly with 180-240 grit sandpaper after it has dried. The extent of this bruising can vary greatly from room to room and even from area to area within a single room. We have a 20 year old house that had fir floors throughout, other than kitchen. This reclaimed wood floor product is similar to our “Rustic Douglas Fir” flooring with the difference being the amount of sanding we have done to it. Sand along the lines of the wood grain. 3. Floor sanders come in three distinct types: edgers, orbital sanders, and drum sanders. If you get a good sander, you'll even be able to lift up the sander and spend a little more time on heavy-wear or problem areas. Cupboards, doorways, closets and any other areas or items where you are working should be protected from dust with plastic. Our floors damage easily! Because of the likelihood for new unfinished flooring boards to be uneven, installers sometimes resort to a drastic sanding technique. Wooden boat decks were constantly exposed to the elements and they never rotted – you should sell me something that lasts like that. My daughter took off the ugly vinyl a previous owner put in her kitchen (1920s tudor style bungalow), and then just let the wood stay … Luckily, most exterior porches are made with fir which is relatively soft and easy to flatten. View Stain, Oil-Based Suppliers. Allow to dry 3 hours. In fact, we were warned not to go past 120 grit because it would close up the pores and stain couldn’t penetrate at all. After a few tests, we liked the outcome with 100 grit sandpaper and stuck with that without over … You barely have to even go over the floor. If the floor is old, very hard, or has residual finish, it can be a bit trickier to determine the right sequence. When sanding a new floor, you’ll often want to define the finest grade you want to use and then work backwards, skipping a grade of grit between each sanding. Myth#2: Outdoor finishes should last at least a decade without maintenance. Remove wall hangings, light fixtures, window coverings and anything else in the area that could be dirtied or damaged by your work. If you plan on staining fir, like we did, you can’t keep sanding and sanding all the way up to a, say 300 grit, sandpaper until you have a nice smooth surface. The most common types of pine flooring found in Westchester homes are Douglas fir and Southern Yellow Pine. The second is to screen and then "pop the grain" with water and allow to dry overnight before staining. Make sure your floor hasn’t been waxed before painting, and remove the wax if it has. Apply a coat of the Bona Novia Satin the same way you did the sealer by edging and rolling (using a NEW roller). This is the cost breakdown of our epic floor sanding effort (dining room, hallway, first-floor landing & guest … Whether your flooring is freshly installed or has been in place for years, it’s bound to have minor scuffs, marks, and scratches on it. Try to keep … After sanding, thoroughly clean all dust from the flooring. We are now in the process of removing the carpet in the other two. Technically, pine flooring is not a hardwood; it is a soft wood. The result of these options is that the neutral-stain floor will have the least stain color showing, the … Upstairs, in the bedrooms, we have what I believe are Douglas Fir wood floors. This step … (Other kinds of fir are softer, though still harder than pine.) It may be over-sanded, or it may have a veneer that's too thin to sand. Next, use a floor buffer fitted with a fine-grit screening pad to “screen-sand” the flooring. Specializing in Premium Wide Plank Fir and Alder Flooring. I has old paint on it and is bare in a lot of places. Sometimes it was painted to mimic a patterned rug. Change out your sanding disks as necessary. Seems like 2021 is turning out to be more about patching & Repairing them old worn out floors ? These are before and after pictures of my living room. A floor edger is essentially a powerful, super-sized orbital hand sander that allows you to sand next to baseboards and walls. Even then, it takes experience and skill to apply darker stains so it looks good, especially on a large area. Sand floors down to bare wood if there's a wax finish on top of the polyurethane, if the finish has worn through or if the floor has been stained or damaged. It is very soft wood. An orbital floor sander is even larger and more powerful than the edger, but both operate by randomly and rapidly moving a single sheet of sandpaper around the wood. We have said it many times before, but one of our favorite things to do is bring old floors back to life and to showcase their natural and undying beauty. On the gentler side, with a fine-grit disc, the 6" right angle random orbit sander is adept at prep work, from opening the grain of new lumber to sanding a newly stripped door or the flat parts of unfinished … The floor is absolutely beautiful. This fine-detail work can make your DIY project look more like a professional job. So when we are refinishing wood floors in this house, we want to take extra precautions to help protect the finished surface. Fir floors usually are referring to douglas fir, which is actually harder than most hardwoods, expecially after it ages. Opening for business and … Follow these steps when painting a floor: Step 1: Rough Surface: Using a square pad sander (or by hand), rough up the finish on the floor with 150-grit sandpaper. Sand down any part of the wood floor covered in a protective layer to bare wood. When I was a sanding pro, we would sand and edge to 120 for a stain grade floor. Coarse 120-grit sandpaper will … Use the same preparations for screening, though you might want to create a double airlock (plastic on both sides of a door) to keep the dust confined — it really flies with a drum sander. And then there’s that big, scary sanding machine… But it’s really not that difficult. The fir was stained natural and had many faded/darker spots from furniture and rugs when we moved in, and its tone was an unattractive yellow/orange so we refinished it and stained it special walnut last month. Step 1: Prepare the Area. As a DIY job, the cost will depend on how many rooms you are doing in one go. Fir is a soft wood, so it will sand, stain and finish somewhat different than a typical oak floor. Then we would hand sand the butt ends of the floor to blend the edged area into the main field. Other types include heart pine and eastern white pine. It has already been tested with my >100 lb dog and 4 boys running around and has … Just rolling the frig makes a slight indentation. Step 3: Refinishing … The Best Floor Sander for Beginning DIYers Unless you plan to sand many floors in your lifetime, your best choice of floor sander is the random orbital sander from one maker in particular. Sand on your hands and knees using broad, straight strokes. You may … Keep in mind that if the wood swells up again, the wood filler you just added may crack and come out of place. Posted on Jan 8, 2021. Be prepared for the buffer to swing to the right or left depending on how you position the … buckteeth | Posted in General Discussion on September 13, 2010 12:01pm Our house has a very old fir floor. We recently had a sanding + refinishing job on some fir floors that had been painted. We paid about £250 to have our living room floor (about 15m²) sanded and varnished. Doug fir does have a distinct 2 color grain, but not necessarily a rustic look. Sanding a wood floor is a multi-step process. Before Your Start Sanding Floors. Clear these unwanted marks by sanding the entire floor. Indeed, some have enough power to run a 36-grit floor sanding disc, which could save you from renting floor-specific sanding equipment when refinishing wood floors. They make the first pass with the floor sander diagonally across the boards, instead of going parallel to them. END OF MATERIAL SCIENCE RAMBLINGS. Vacuum, then wipe with a damp cloth. That’s less than half!! If you're going … You can stain it or leave it with a natural polyurethane finish. What this means? Each reclaimed wood plank is passed through our sander to smooth out the boards further without removing all of the original character. I am really leaning on cleaning them up, … The first is to sand the floor with 100 grit on the drum machine and the edger, and then hand sand the edges with the grain with 80grit sandpaper. This is a tough DYI, so don’t beat yourself up. Background on pine floors. That way you'll get a heads-up on, and hopefully the knowledge to avoid, some of the problems you might encounter and some of the mistakes … Learn more. 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