I made a lot of progress yesterday when I grinded the Hardwood floors of the Red Oak in our bedroom suite! I didn’t finish it. I would suspect that I am about halfway with the entire process. I started with 36-grit sandpaper because I removed a really dark finish and yesterday didn’t even go through this whole process. But that’s the most difficult part (I will show you a little), so the rest should go so much faster. As soon as the entire original finish is switched off, I will end with 60-grit, 80-grit and then with 100 bodies.
This type of at this point feels anti -climactic. After all, these hardwood floors were installed a little more than two months ago, and at that time they looked like this …
And then colored and polyurethane they and they looked like this …
The all this hard work and back to the point where I was a little more than two months ago does not really feel like progress. But I know when everything is said and done, I will be so happy that I have used this opportunity to change the floor color not only in our bedroom suite, but also in our entire house.
Anyway, I rented two Floor Sanders from Home Depot. Our Home Depot rental department is pretty new, so this was my first time that I rented Home Depot. And I’m so happy that I did it! The reason why I did not shine my own floors the first Go ’round (when the floors were installed at the beginning of this year) is that I remembered having cut the soils in the rest of the house years ago, and it was not a funny process. I rented these Sanders from a place called called here in Waco, and the drum Sander was difficult to use and created a lot of dust that was thrown into every corner and Winn in every room. The edge of the edge was terrible and almost impossible to use, and the grinding wheel flew over the room after it was only a few meters. I remember that I was over the grinder in tears.
I didn’t want to go through that again, so I set the grinding of the wooden floors this year. But if I had known how great Home Depots was Sanders, I would never have set this job! These American Sanders flooringers are easy to use, and I was particularly impressed by the edge grinder. (Tiger also seemed impressed. )
Speaking of tigers, he’s really well. I put a collar on him with an air mark so that I could keep an eye on it. He spends pretty much all the time in our back yard, and I am very often out there to give him a lot of love and cuddle.
Anyway, here is the grinding progress. I did the entire loop with the 36-grit sand paper on the drum Sander in all areas. And then I was made about halfway with the edge grinder with the 36-grit sand paper.
The areas around the doors are obviously the most challenging parts, and I have to get new blades for my floor scraper to get to the door post. Since I go to a really easy finish from really dark soils, I obviously want every single piece of this dark finish as far as possible. And I would like to do that without removing additional trim pieces if possible.
Fortunately, the areas with the fantastic Edge Sander, which are located directly against the walls, are much easier than expected. However, I still have to use a soil scratch in the corners because the round edge grinder cannot get into these corners.
But I did the entire main area of the foyer. My biggest concern is the transition between the bedroom suite foyer and the music room. For the time being, this has to be a clean, straight line (until I refinance the rest of the soils in the future), and I am not quite sure in my ability to get a clean, straight line, even with a bottom treasurer. Of course I will do my best, but maybe I have to live for a while with a not so perfect transition.
Anyway, the reason why the first loop takes so long is that the dark finish has to be removed from the entire wooden grain. With just one pass it looks like this …
And of course that won’t. When I tried to find out which finish and which products I placed on Red Oak Hartwood Floors with a slight finish, I saw as many videos as I could find on YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok. I encountered a video of a young woman who shifted her floors, and she did not protect enough to remove the entire finish from the grain. The result was not great. I thought maybe she just didn’t know what Red Oak floors should look like when they were completely sanded. Maybe she thought that Red Eiche floors of course have really dark grain, but they don’t. If you are sanded properly, red oak floors have fairly bright grain. Every really dark grain is remaining and has to be removed.
So getting everything is the biggest challenge for the first grinding. As soon as all of this has expired, the rest of the grinding (grinding 60, 80 and 100 grit) should go pretty quickly.
I will use Bona Naturalal on the floors and this seal has added a little white pigment. As soon as they are completely finished, the finished floors should be a bit lighter than in their completely natural, unfinished condition.
Another challenge is that this entire small hallway between the foyer and the bedroom has to be carried out with the edge grinder, since there is not enough space to use the large drum grinder there because I have to grind with the grain of the wood. That doesn’t seem to be a big hall at all if you look at it, but if you bend and use a powerful edge grinder to grind the whole thing, it seems much bigger than it is.
I also noticed that I have several areas that I have already sanded, but I clearly didn’t do enough. As soon as I finish with the 36-grit loop, I give all the floors over and go back and hit the areas that I missed before I continued.
I guess that with the other three sandpaper grains, up to 100 grains, I can get through the grinding at the same time when I made all floors with the 36 body. So the most difficult part is almost over.
But here is the funny part. We can finally get an idea of what my blue walk -in wardrobe will look like with light wooden floors. Here, too, the finished floors will be a little bit lighter than what they look here, but look at this huge difference that the floors make!
Will that not be pretty?! I am so happy that I have decided to take this opportunity to change the floor color! Here is a memory of what it looked like with the (very dusty) dark floor.
I mean, the light floor makes such a big difference in the room!
And this time I will also take time to fill out areas like this with Red Oak Wood Wood. I didn’t do this for the first time because they were not shown with a really dark stain color. But with a light, natural floor color you will definitely show.
As fearful as I am to finish these floors, I want you to do it properly, and I want you to be as perfect as possible when you are done. I have the Sanders for another day, so I have to get through with all the wood filling and grinding before going to bed tonight. And then I hope to start with the Sealer tomorrow morning and then tomorrow afternoon with top coat. If everything goes as planned, I should have ended floors to show on Monday!
