refinishing a wood floor

[Snowking]

I'm going to refinish the floor in the kitchen and have to replace some boards. how hard is it to sand a floor? any tips or tricks i should know about? thanks, snowking

[SkunkedAgain]

This topic has been covered, so you might want to search. If I remember, I had the minority opinion that sanding and refinishing a floor isn't hard - it's labor intensive but not hard. My advice is to rent all of the right tools. You'll want a belt sander for the main areas and a smaller one to get the edges and one for the corners. The best sanding advice is to apply the machinery lightly to the floors at first. The worst thing that you could do is to gouge the floors right off the bat! Start lightly with the heavy grit and sand just enough to take off the old stain and remove any slight imperfections in the wood. You likely can't get all of the dings out of the floor, and if you try, you'll unevenly sand your floors. So just take off a light layer of top wood. Last advice is take a hammer and a nail setter and make sure that all of your nails are flush. It's no fun ripping a sanding belt because the edge of a nail head was sticking up.

When you get to the protecting and finishing, do a good job of removing dust from the floors and follow the drying guidelines on the stain and polyurethane cans. It's important for that stuff to dry correctly.

You'll also need to decide how many coats of poly to apply. The more you apply, the longer it will last. It sucks to do all of the work to refinish the floors, only to need to redo them a year or two later because you didn't take the time for a couple of extra coats of poly. Don't skimp.