Wood Floor Sanding Methods

While a wood floor is a beautiful part of any home, it often needs repair and refinishing. Continual traffic makes scratches and wear inevitable, but you can restore your floor's original look by sanding and refinishing. As long as your floor is the standard three-quarters of an inch thick, you can use any of these sanding techniques. For one-half- and three-eighths-inch floors, or three-quarter-inch floors that have been sanded down to this thickness, talk to a professional to avoid the risk that you will sand the flooring down too far.

Drum Sanding

Drum sanding, the fastest and most popular way to restore your floor's sleek surface, also requires the least amount of manual labor. If the floor is more than 100 square feet, you will likely find hand sanding or belt sanding just too time-consuming and choose a drum sander instead. With it, you can sand up to 500 square feet of floor in an afternoon. A large machine, the drum sander moves a circular drum with a sanding pad on the bottom, crossing the floor at a relatively slow pace. Shifting the machine to the right, you make another pass, always moving along the floorboard seams.

Hand Sanding

Hand sanding is great for refinishing small areas of a wood floor and for grinding down single floorboards that stick up above the rest. Use this method when you only want to sand an area that is smaller than the circumference of a drum sander disk. To hand sand a wood floor, cut a strip of 220-grit sandpaper and stick one end on a sanding block, preferably a rubber one for comfort. Attach the sandpaper to the block tacks to hold it in place, then pull the strip taut across the bottom and press it onto the tacks on the other side of the block. Move the block in a back and forth motion, allowing the sandpaper to gently grind down the floorboards until the finish is removed or the edge of the floorboard is flush with the rest of the floor.

Belt Sanding

Belt sanding, another way to tackle small areas of a wood floor, is ideal for jobs of 10 to 50 square feet. It's also a great choice if several floorboards are sticking up above the rest. A belt sander will efficiently sand areas too large for a hand sander but not large enough to justify renting a drum sander. Fit the belt sander with a 220-grit sanding belt. Turn on the machine, place it on the floor and carefully drag the sander back along the floorboards, following the grain. Be careful not to let the sander sit too long in one spot as it can quickly gouge the floor. For lighter jobs, a 320-grit sanding pad creates a very smooth finish, but it will only match the finish of the surrounding floorboards if they had also been sanded with a 320-grit belt.

References

• Hardwood floor refinishing

Resources

• Video on drum sanding