BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Home Improvement refinishing hardwood floors

Can anyone give me a step-by-step "how to" on refinishing hardwood floors? And, is it a dangerous process--i.e. will I catch the house on fire if I attempt this job myself? Thanks.

Hi there!

Step by step might be a bit complex here. There are so many variables involved. As in, do you want to strip down all the finish to the bare wood, or do you just want to take out topmost scratches?

Stripping down to the bare wood generally requires a sanding drum or the use of stripper chemicals. Taking out scratches may just entail scuffing up the floor with 400 grit sandpaper and laying a coat or two of Polyurethane over the top.

Please be a little more specific, and I'll, be able to give you a better run down on what you will need to do.

Thanks

Apparently, the previous owner put a couple of coats of something (maybe the polyurethane you mentioned) and it just made the floors look good temporarily. Now it is flaking and peeling like it must have bubbled and the bubbles popped. Chunks of the coating get knocked loose when you sweep.

In another part of the house, the floors were done properly. Those floors appear to be in good shape as far as the wood goes. I'm assuming the ones that need "refinishing" are pretty good under the peeling stuff. They are in rooms that probably never received a lot of use--a formal living room and formal dining room. (The house is 60 years old.)

I'd like to get the flaky, peeling stuff off and then just perk up what's underneath--if that sounds reasonable. I want the floors to look nice, but a few minor scratches won't bother me. There are some pretty big rugs covering a good bit of that floor space, so, not a whole lot of wood will end up on display.

Does this info help? Thank you.

I had the exact same problem on a hardwood floor. The previous owner just slathered on polyurethane taking virtually no care on how it looked. Some areas were thick, some areas were thin, and there were numerous bubbles all over the place. You could literally peel pieces of this stuff off, and it was a total disaster. Here is what I did.

I got a 6 inch blade steel putty or flat knife, available at any hardware store, and then I got a heat gun. Using the heat gun, I literally melted this gunk , and scraped it off in 6 inch sheets with my putty knife. It was very easy to do. Heat the finish until it just starts to bubble, and then slide your knife beneath it. Slowly move the gun sideways, and follow underneath the gunk with your knife. It works very much like a spatula under a piece of cake. Heat the gunk on top, and slide the knife underneath it.

This may sound like a little bit of work, and it is, but I'll tell you why this is the best way to do it.

When the finish is that thick, if you try and sand it off with a drum sander, the rotation of the drum will begin to heat up the gunk and it will melt onto the sandpaper. It won't sand very well, and you will go bankrupt buying paper. If you use a chemical stripper, it will cost too much to get all the finish off, and it will take days to do this.

Using the heat gun and blade may be a bit more time consuming in some respects, but here are the advantages. Firstly, your initial investment of blade and gun will be about 30 bucks tops. Secondly, doing it this way literally preserves the original wood finish color that was first applied.

Since then, I have done this a couple of more times in very similar situations with super heavy coats of Poly, that was bubbled and flaking, and each time the floor came out in a superior condition that was virtually ready for a new, thinner coat to be applied.

My advice is to pick an afternoon some day, crank up the tunes, and have at it!

I hope that helps a bit.
Thanks and Take Care

Thank you so much. We will try this. Can't say when, but we will!

Hi Cela!

No matter how you go about doing this, please let me know the results. I am very curious.

Thanks and GOOD LUCK

I plan to do this exactly as you described. It all made sense the way you explained it.

I do have one question. What's the likelihood of fire with the heat gun? It sounds like, if we're careful, we should be fine. Just checking. Thanks.

Hi Cela!

Believe it or not,and only because I am the curious sort that I am, I blasted away with a heat gun on full power, using a strip of that poly stuff that I pulled off. I eventually got it to burst into flames, but there was so much smoke beforehand, that had I not been outside when I did this, I would have been a coughing wreck inhaling the fumes.

I would say that, although feasible under normal use to start the poly on fire with a heat gun, you would generate so much smoke before combustion, that anyone would pull the heat gun away before even the remote possibility of a fire happened.

When you are actually heating up the poly to scrape, it will begin to bubble from the heat, and that is the exact moment to slide the knife beneath it. You'll begin moving the heat gun slowly by then, making more bubbles and sliding the knife. Doing that alone, and there will never be a danger of combustion at all. It may take a few minutes to get the hang of this, but once you do, the poly will peel effortlessly onto the knife.

Needless to say, any time the poly begins to smoke, it's too hot and time to move the heat gun.

Thanks and Take care

Thank you, Dale. You really went the extra mile testing out the fire potential! That makes me feel so confident about using your method.

Now all I have to do is psych myself up to act like we're moving. The rooms in question are pretty full of books and china--and furniture. I'll have to pack it all so I can get to the floors! But, at least, I know how to fix the floors!

Dale, I have a room that the previous owner refinished and it is a light color...underneath is the darker color. I tried the heat gun and it was kind of a waxy residue and hard to scrape off. Luckily the po only refinished one room. I tackled the hardest one already. It had the 4 inch tiles and once removed it looked like grout. I used the heat gun, chemical stripping and sandpaper. It took me quite a while to get all that finished (mostly because I was babysitting one of my grandchildren most of the time) but it is beautiful now. I have several rooms that need the floors refinished. I will have to pull up carpet and cruddy cheap laminate flooring that the po put down. I crawled under the house and the floor where the laminate is on looks great from the underside so I was pumped about that. The kitchen is a different story, and the bathroom as well. I am thinking linoleum for those two rooms. The bath has cheap linoleum and the kitchen more of the cheap laminate. We are only the third owner of this 100+ year old house. Luckily the po didn't remuddle too much.