Restoration without sanding is a viable option for conventional hardwoods, prefinished wood, and laminated wood. Traditional hardwoods can be sanded, but prefinished or laminated wood floors are difficult, if not impossible, to sand. Why? Because laminated flooring (glue-down or floating) contain only a thin layer of beautiful wood veneer over plywood, they can’t be sanded more than twice without destroying them and exposing the plywood.
When it comes to conventional hardwoods, skipping the sanding step saves you time, energy, and money. For more information, visit the best Floor sanding in Bendigo today!
But, Why change the colour?
There might be several causes for this. You could wish to match a particular piece of furniture to your existing décor, refresh a weary space, or restyle an older work. This will help you decide the PolyShades colour you’ll need to transform your present finish into the colour you want.
Benefits of using floor polishers
- Maintaining the cleanliness of your floors for a longer period of time
- Keeping dirt and moisture at bay
- Defending the surface against cracking
Always Test Before You Do Anything
This is the most effective method for ensuring that the finishes you intend to use adhere to the floor. Through all of this work to have your new finish flake or fail to adhere correctly, resulting in a higher cost, more time spent, and a mess. Save time by thoroughly inspecting your flooring to determine anything wrong with them that would prohibit a new finish from operating correctly. To test your refinishing products, tape off a small piece of the floor and roughen it up using a sanding screen. Sanding is the best option if it flakes when softly scraped with a coin or has a rough texture like an orange peel.
Dealing with Floors That Have Been Waxed
The new finish will not adhere to your floor if it has been waxed. Wax will remain on the floor even if it is worn in places with little foot movement. Drop some mineral spirits in a location that doesn’t get much use, like a corner or behind a door, as a test. What exactly are mineral spirits, though? They’re a transparent liquid solvent made from petroleum that you can buy at a home improvement store.
However, wax isn’t the only substance to avoid. Other home chemicals such as furniture polish, glass cleaner, pesticide (from a pest control expert), wallpaper paste, paint, and other chemical cleansers might leave residue on your flooring, preventing the adherence of a new finish. Perform a similar test with mineral spirits in a few more locations to verify your floor is in the most excellent possible condition for adhesion before you begin.
When Full-On Sanding Is the Best Approach
Going the sand-free route isn’t always the best option. If you have a wax-finished floor or discover other substances that prohibit a few finishes from bonding, you’ll want to sand everything down and start again.
Is there a lot of deep scrapes and dents on the floor that goes through the finish as well as the wood? What about high-traffic places where the finish has worn away or flaked off completely? Sanding is your most excellent option for achieving the cleanest fresh finish. Though there’s no danger in applying a new finish to floors with this much wear because it will preserve the surface, it may highlight existing deep gouges and won’t look perfect. Also, if you use the chemical etching technique on raw wood (more on that below), it will stain it.
Water damage or pet stains permeated through the finish to the actual flooring will not be hidden (or removed) by a new layer of finish. Sanding is the best approach to get rid of these unattractive stains.
How much does sanding and refinishing hardwood floors cost?
Expect to pay a bit less than $500 per 275 square feet if you intend to DIY your hardwood flooring. The typical price range is from $1,000 to $2,400.
Renting sanding equipment and purchasing sanding pads, wood stains, brushes, and finish are all included in the overall cost.
How much does sanding and refinishing hardwood floors cost?
Hardwood floor refinishing is almost always less expensive than replacing them. With the latter choice, you’d be paying not just for the new wood but also for the labour involved in removing the old wood and carting it away.
How to prepare for refinishing hardwood floors?
Refinishing hardwood floors is a hurry-up-and-wait process. Before walking on the floors, you must wait several hours between each layer of stain or sealer, possibly up to 24 hours if you live in a high-humidity area. During a refinish, the lag time may keep your kitchen or bedroom out of action for days.
Can you refinish a floor without sanding?
Without sanding, you can’t correctly refinish a floor. To accomplish it perfectly, you must remove all layers of the previous finish and smooth up the surface before applying a new one. You may, however, recoat a beautiful floor without sanding it first to provide a layer of protection.
References:
- Rustogi, K., Strusevich, V.A. Single machine scheduling with a generalized job-dependent cumulative effect. J Sched 20, 583–592 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-016-0497-6
- Sousa, F.J.P., Júnior, N.V., Weingaertner, W.L. et al. Glossiness distribution over the surface of stoneware floor tiles due to the polishing process. J Mater Sci 42, 10124–10132 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-007-2118-4
- Lorena Araújo Silva, Bacus de Oliveira Nahime, Alexsandro dos Santos Felipe, Carlos Nelson Elias, Devaney Ribeiro do Carmo, Elton Carvalho de Lima, Igor Soares dos Santos, Karen Lopes Lima, Danilo Istuque, Performance of cementitious matrices incorporating concrete floor polishing sludge waste, Construction and Building Materials, Volume 265, 2020, 120119, ISSN 0950-0618, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2020.120119
