OT MAPLE HARD WOOD FLOORS

As far as floor sanders go, the orbital sanders that Home Depot rents are real easy for an amateur to use. These sanders have four orbital disks and use hook-and-loop sanding disks. If you're just doing light sanding, I imagine that a vibratory sander with a screen-type sandpaper would be a better choice. If it's a small floor and you're just roughing up the finish, you can get by even with a hand sander.

You need to get all the dust off the floor after you sand. Vacuum, then wipe it down with a rag dampened with mineral spirits.

Note that there are both water-based and oil-based finishes. I've only used oil finishes, but I'm told that the water-based finishes are trickier to apply.

The way Billy described refinishing floors is the way I've done it the most. The problems he talked about are exactly what you will run into, except they're a lot worse when your're doing it because it's hard, heavy work and you get to hating anything that means you'll have to do more of it. Something I hate to tell you, but you should know, is that it's not likely that you'll do a first class job on your first floor. There's too much to learn from your mistakes. Ideally you'd do two or three other floors for practice before you did your own floor. Of course, you'd have to be crazy to do that.

The last floor I put down and finished was about 15 years ago. It was red maple and it needed a lot of finishing. I rented a random orbital floor sander which I thought was a huge improvement from the old drum sander and circular edging sander. The r/o sander has a square pad and uses abrasive screens (my memory of this is not completely clear.) The sanding screens get progressively finer, just like the belts for a drum sander do. The straight edges and the r/o action let you get right up to walls, so you don't have to use an edging sander. It's still hard work, but you can get it right, or pretty close to right, the first time.

One other suggestion I have is that you investigate commercial quality wax or acrylic finishes and rent a heavy duty buffer. You might be able to achieve the high gloss finish your wife wants with only a small fraction of the expense and effort of totally refinishing the floors.

All the best, Stan

I have not seen my old friends from those days all that often, but heard they were still at it.

I used to do this work while in high school, good friends dad 2nd job aside from the railroad was this business, it's a lot of work to do right if you need to remove the existing finish.

I may be off on this one, but when we would re-finish floors, it would require sanding it down with the appropriate abrasive, using lots of care with all the equipment, big drum sander,(that thing was a real pain to lug up stairs!) edger and under the radiator sanders. The existing finish determined the size grit or abrasive paper by number to remove it, once off, we then kept sanding changing progressively to finer abrasive on each pass back, last pass was the finest abrasive. One thing, you have to be thorough and use a lot of care, the big drum sander must keep moving, problem is, poor workmanship will show when you re-apply the finish, sanding marks are what you don't want, when they brought out the circular buffer, one grain of grit under the paper can leave a lot of marks. We cleaned an vacuumed thoroughly. Corners, stair treads, under radiators and other areas are a pain to terminate cleanly, whereas you can't get to places that the old finish will show.

Finishing process was after the last pass on fine sanding, we would vacuum thoroughly, apply the 1st coat of clear polyurethane, then buff with a fine abrasive, vacuum again, 2nd coat, repeat, 3rd coat, repeat if necessary, this how we did a finish with a high lustre. I've seen floors done where you could see way too many sanding marks, my friends dad learned from his dad, they had a good rep for quality work, so I thought what I learned was good experience.

Note: the fumes from that polyurethane were noxious, you won't want to be home while that is drying, nice to do in good weather, being able to leave the windows open.

Not sure how technology has changed on materials and methods, it seems like quite a bit of work, but when done, sure looks great.