HardWood Floor

By Vic Nagy

If all your floors have previously been carpeted like a lot of places did in the 70s and 80s and you want to get back to wood flooring look you have to remove the carpets obviously. This is an easy job. You go to one corner of the room with a pair of pliers grab some of the carpet and pull up. Usually the way I do it pull enough of it up and you can start cutting a 2 foot strip from the edge the length of the carpet you can roll this into a bale if the bale is too big, shorten the bale length causing it to lose its overall diameter. Then tie up the bales and take them out of the room.

There will be strips of wood with little nail sticking out of it all the way around the edge of the floor. You might need to invest in a molding remover pry bar which will get underneath the tack strips and pry away from the floor once you have it lifted away from your hardwood floor take a pair of pliers to completely remove it from the floor, being careful not to prick yourself in the fingers with the sharp little tact barbs.

Your hardwood floor should now be ready for sanding.

Quick note: you're spending a lot of time and effort into making a new hardwood floor so don't waste your time with unprofessional sanding equipment. Unless the floor space is really small like 3 or 4 feet square. On smaller space like this you can get away with probably an orbital square pad sander and a 30 or 40 grit sandpaper, you most probably won't go too far with a piece of sandpaper. You might end up using two pieces of paper per square foot of area so this could be expenses if you try to do a larger floor. And this is why it's better to go with professional equipment. I also use a very sharp wood paint scraper to go around the edges and hard spots where the sanding machine won't work. The trick with the wood paint scraper it has to be very very sharp and I tell you to keep it sharp by having a file on hand. When you're using the wood paint scraper try scraping in the direction of the grain. You can be very accurate with the paint scraper getting into the smallest little crevices and edges.

Caution! Be careful about leaving your.collection bag on the sander I never leave the bag full of sanding dust, since you've been working the machine hard it got hot and you have a bag of dust which is flammable you could end up with spontaneous combustion.

After working on hundreds of homes a lot of experience has been acquired. If you're interested in tapping into my knowledge come see me at Diy Restorations. Here you can learn more about home improvements and renovations.

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