Refinishing hardwood floors is really hard if you're going to do it correctly. It's far more complicated than running a vacuum cleaner and just moving your furniture around. That's because refinishing wood floors creates an incredible amount of fine dust (see below) that gets into everything nearby.
Now that we've moved all the furniture and wrapped all the rooms in plastic, it's time to get the sanding equipment out. Some homeowners might want to do the sanding themselves but it's not recommended. It takes time to learn how to use the equipment properly and what you can rent will never produce the results of professional equipment (costing $5,000 to 10,000 per sander) used by pros.
Until you've watched the entire process, you have no idea how complicated the process gets to refinish a few floors. There are several different sanders, i.e. there's a special one for working along the edge of the room where there is baseboard trim. Stairs and railings have a lot of handwork because the sanders can't get between the spindles. Just knowing which sander to use for each part of the job is a skill few homeowners have and if you only do this once or twice in your lifetime, does it make sense to do the research to get it right the first time?
Steps to Refinishing Wood Floors
- Step 1: Moving the furniture.
- Step 2: Wrapping fixtures, walls/doors and open doorways with plastic to avoid wood dust.
- Step 3: Skilled sanding to remove enough, but not too much of the wood (this article).
- Step 4: Now it's time to apply multiple coats of polyurethane to the floors, and some floors require staining first.
- Step 5: Cleaning up and putting furniture back (we think you get this one without photos).
Thank you for so much for sharing this tutorial. It’s very informative and explained well, including the importance of caring for equipment properly.
Wood floors are beautiful so it pays to take care of them, and refinish when needed.
I like that you mentioned that it takes some time to learn how to use equipment properly. If I was going to try to learn to use equipment for finishing flooring, I would want to learn from a professional. It might be a good idea to hire a professional and ask for tips on keeping it looking new when you need it to be refinished.
John, You have the right idea for many homeowner projects & I used to have a friend that did just that, you could hire her to teach you how to hang drywall, install tile, etc. She’d come to your house & work with you for a few hours until you’re were ready to go solo. However with refinishing floors, I don’t trust renting the equipment as it’s not maintained well (my handyman experience) so after one botched job, I started referring customers to flooring professionals (same for appliance repairs as they’ve got the right test tools).
Thank you for the tutorial! It really is a big help. Thanks again!