How to refinish hardwood floors DIY

So when we bought our house I knew from the get-go that we would be refinishing the oak floors in our downstairs living room, bonus room and hallway.  They were literally DESTROYED and disgusting. 

 

Prepare yourself- and the screeching violins for the the before photos. 

***shudders***

Ok now lets walk you through how we fixed this!

I cannot stress the amount of prep work that should be done ahead of time that will help you. 

First of at- at minimum this is a 4 day project. This means that you need a minimum of 4 days that for the most part you need to stay off the floors. This is ok if its a random bedroom or something- but this is our main entryway so we really needed to do it as quickly as possible. 

For a minimum time commitment your should plan: 

1-day of sanding 

1 day of staining and letting it dry 

1 day of 2 coats of poly- at least 4 hours apart 

1 day of the final coat of poly.

** In addition to the days of working on the floors there is a minimum amount of time that the floor needs to cure after you apply the last coat of polyurethane. Ours required 5 days before we could put rugs or furniture down. Know this ahead of time and plan accordingly.

In addition to the time commitment you also want to plan out what your weather will most likely be like and what time of year would be best to do this. You want to be able to open your doors and windows to get the dust and chemicals from the stain and polyurethane out of your house. Plus the stain and polyurethane don't dry correctly if the temperature is too cold or too hot. We left our windows open for roughly a week to air everything out 

Chapter One: Prepping for the dust bowl that is coming to your house 

First of all I cannot impress upon you enough the amount of dust that accumulates from doing this. We did multiple things to try to contain the dust.  

1. Drop cloths on any surfaces that will be exposed. We have carpet on our stairs and to limit the amount of dust I would have to vacuum out of them later we put down canvas drop cloths.

2. Covering vents to prevent dust getting into your duct system. Obviously please don't be running your A/C or heat while you do this!! This is left over scraps of plastic shower curtain liners.

3. Covering door ways. My best solution for this was to buy cheap shower curtain liners from Walmart. We also purchased giant zippers from amazon and cut the curtain in half in order to create doorways. This way we could zip the doors shut while we were sanding. These worked really well and I was able to save them to be used for future projects. 

4. Put filters on fans. We had two fans going. I purchased two basic 20X20 filters and taped them on the back of the fans and it was shocking the amount of dust they collected. We aimed them out the window to suck out the dusty air in the house and blow it out. Of course I forgot to take a picture of it. 

5. Consider removing your trim. I was not a fan of the existing trim and I took this as an opportunity to replace it. It is hard to get the edges effectively with trim still on. Plus I got stain on a few spots on the walls that I just covered up with the new trim. Basically if you keep your trim, plan on having to repaint it after this adventure because its going to take a beating. 

6. In addition to all of this I also painted rooms the colors I wanted before we did this. This way I could paint without using a drop cloth and I didn't care if I spilled because it was going to get sanded up. 

Chapter 2: Sanding Day

Materials List- 

Dust Masks- seriously its not good to inhale all those tiny dust particles. Wear an N95 while sanding and open all your windows! 

Ear protection- Those sanders are LOUD 

Eye protection- I'm really sensitive to dust in my eyes 

Knee pads- seriously- for the edges you are kneeling on a hardwood floor. You'll thank me later

Shop Vac- Again SO MUCH DUST

Stainable wood filler 

The Sander(s)

Ok now this is the controversial part. There are two types of sanders meant for this situation- a drum sander and a square buff sander. Drum sanders get a lot of bad press because they are really intense and they can damage your floor if you aren't careful. 

Here is my advice- if you're floors are in pretty good shape overall you just don't like the color of them than the square buff sander is probably your best bet. It's a pretty safe user friendly sander for good quality floors. If your floor is beat to death with a lot of problem spots- you're gonna have to step up your game and go to the drum sander. 

Do your research before renting the drum sander. We watched a lot videos on YouTube of other people using them. A lot of people recommended practicing lifting the drum up and down on a piece of plywood. We didn't do this because my husband doesn't like to listen to other peoples advice- but the theory is good.  

So we rented a drum sander and an edge sander. We also utilized our orbital sander on some of the tighter spots. It was roughly $100 total to rent both sanders for 24 hours 

Sand paper- the place that you rent the sanders from should have the paper to go with the machine (I'd probably double check) We just purchased more than I thought we would need and returned the extra the next day when we returned the machines. 

At minimum I would get 60 grit and 100 grit. We also got a 36 grit and used it only on our really problem areas. 

Overall the drum sander did a really good job getting our damaged floors back to a point that we could work with them. The edge sander was also really nice for the edges (obviously) but I also used it to target the really bad areas. For example there was some areas where it appeared that they dragged a heavy object across the floor- the edge sander worked well for smoothing out this area. 

Max on the first pass of the drum sander- notice the fan with the filter that I forgot to take a formal picture of

*                                                                                      

After we sanded everything with 60 and 100 grit we went through and put stainable wood filler in all the areas with gauges. Other people have done this with saw dust and wood glue but wood filler is a little easier to work with and it worked well for us. We also put it over any exposed nails in the floor we found. If you don't do this the poly will make them really shiny! 

If you look at the pictures above you will see that I put a * underneath one of the pictures. You can see in this picture that there are some dark spots despite a crazy amount of staining. This is most likely from water damage (i.e. most likly a kid or a pet peed here or something and it wasn't cleaned up properly). I've heard of using hydrogen peroxide or bleach to clean this up. We tried both and while it did lighten the spots we weren't able to get rid of them completely. I honestly think those spots have been there for so long that we would never be able to get rid of them. Oh well, that's what rugs are for. 

Chapter 3: Staining 

Materials List:

- Stain of your choice 

- Cotton cloth

- Lambs wool applicator 

-Disposable paint roller tray 

So despite my father's best efforts to instill a love of natural colored wood in my soul, I ABOSOLUTELY LOVE dark wood. I always have a can of minwax Jacobean in my garage for any staining project that may arise. However I had been cautioned by many people not to go too dark or too light for wood floors because they will turn into the bane of your existence. You will see EVERY crumb! So I went into this project knowing I would pick something medium tone (or the darker side of medium). 

One thing I hate about picking stain is that you don't really get a good picture of what it's going to look like from the can. Since this is such a large part of our house I wanted to be sure I was picking the best color possible. So I went and bought 5 cans of sample stain and used painters tape to set up a little sample area to compare and contrast the stains. 

 I let this dry overnight and then texted it to everyone I could think of asking for overall opinions. In the end we ended up going with #2- Provincial by Minwax (for the record #1 is my favorite Jacobean but too dark for this situation)

My biggest recommendation for staining anything is- a little goes a long way. I've had my fair share of overdoing stain and it doesn't look good. You don't need very much-especially if you are going dark. To give you an idea we used 2 quarts of stain on this entire space (2 rooms and a major hallway)

My second biggest recommendation for staining anything is to not use a brush to apply the stain. I find brushes leave the stain looking very patchy. Instead I use a piece of cloth (usually a cotton rag). For this project I purchased a lambs wool applicator and I was very impressed with how well it was able to apply the stain. These can be found at most hardware stores or on amazon. Max went along with a cotton cloth and applied the stain around the edges while I did the main areas. 

Make sure you plan ahead where you are going to start staining and and exit strategy- basically end near a doorway. You do not want to walk on fresh stain. We left the fans on and let our stain dry overnight before stepping on it the next morning. 

These pictures below are the stain the next morning before we applied the polyurethane 

Chapter 4: Polyurethane 

Materials List

-Polyurethane in the brand and glossiness of your choice 

-lambs wool applicator 

- 220 grit sand paper 

-Disposable paint roller tray

After the stain is dry you want to protect your floors with polyurethane. This is the most important part of this process that will increase the longevity of your floors. 

I did some research about the different types of polyurethane- water vs oil. I found this great youtube video that gave reviews of many different polyurethanes specifically for hardwood floors. 

Based on the research I decided to go with Bona Mega polyurethane for my hardwood floors. I specially picked a higher quality brand because I knew these floors would need to be able to take a beating. They are in the main walkways of my house. They also come in a variety of "glossy-ness" variants. I went middle of the road and picked "Satin." I specifically didn't want high gloss because despite all the sanding I knew my floors would still be a little rough and I didn't want to highlight all the mistakes, but I still wanted them to be a little shiny. 

Most polyurethanes recommend applying three coats for best coverage on hardwood floors. Some recommend sanding in between coats and some don't. The common consensus is you can apply two coats of poly in a 24 hour period but three coats is very stressful on the floor and should not be done.

We purposely planned it and applied two coats of poly- one in the morning and one in the evening. We applied it using the lambs wool applicator like we did for the stain.  The first coat will use up the most amount of polyurethane- the wood really soaks it up on the first pass. 

The next day- before applying the final coat of poly we sanded the entire floor with 220 grit sand paper. This really helped get rid of some of the rough spots we found and provided a great surface for the final coat to attach to. 

According to the instructions on our polyurethane it would take 5 days to cure before it was safe to put rugs or furniture on it. It was fully dry to walk on for light traffic within 24 hours. This allowed us to start working on replacing all the trim. 

Below are pictures after 3 coats of polyurethane.  

Overall 

This was a big job for us but so worth it in the end. I'm still shocked how well they turned out and it's starting to make this crazy house feel a little more like a home.  Are the floors perfect? No. You can still see some areas that were permanently damaged- but as I always say- that's just "character" or what rugs are for!

I think this is a totally doable job-even for people who aren't super good at home improvement projects but just be prepared. I cannot stress the amount of prep work that I did in the month prior to refinishing the floors and how much it helped in the end.