What Grit First Sanding Hardwood Floor

None of it is rocket science but it will help you to read through all the sanding pages including first things first working with sanders and edgers and the sanding faq before you begin.

What grit first sanding hardwood floor.

On older floors the first step when sanding is to choose an aggressive grit like 24 grit per square inch to level the boards one to another and remove imperfections if possible. Knowing how to keep the scratch pattern with the grain as much as possible minimizes edger swirl marks. Either way the abrasive to use is 120 or 150 grit sanding screen. Buff the floor starting at one wall and.

The higher the grit number is equivalent to a finer abrasive which creates smoother surface finishes. Before you start sanding remove everything from the room and vacuum the floor. You need to sand the floor at least four times using a finer level of sandpaper each time for getting a smoothly nice hardwood floor. That way you ll get a heads up on and hopefully the knowledge to avoid some of the problems you might encounter and some of the mistakes beginners make.

The first grit is meant to take off any finish the next is to smooth out the pattern of the first grit and the final grit is meant to smooth out any remaining sander marks and provide the. As with the drum sander start with course grit paper and then move to finer grades. Remove shoe moulding the wood trim where the wall meets the floor. We call this process rough cutting.

Solid hardwood boards are 3 4 inches thick and each has a groove milled in its side that overlaps the tongue of the adjacent board. The grit of sandpapers is a rating of the size of abrasive materials on the sandpaper. Lower grit numbers represent coarser abrasives that scrape off materials much quicker. An edger can be difficult to control so practice your technique on scrap wood first.

Use an edger sander or small orbital sander to sand corners edges and small areas such as closet floors bathrooms or stairs. The rotary cut of the edger is the most aggressive cut of all the floor sanding machines. You ll need to sand the entire floor not just one section. Initial efforts in hardwood floor sanding.

Bleach formulated for wood floors may be worth a try but the results are often mediocre at best and at worst the wood is left pitted and blotched. You want to start with a more abrasive grit and then use successively finer grits. Sanding the floor will kick up a lot of dust so protect light fixtures and tape over electrical outlets. Sanding a solid hardwood floor can also be risky if the floor has been sanded before.

Don t be afraid to use new belts and more than one. Like the one used for sanding drywall. When it comes to sanding a hardwood floor grit sequence is everything. So the first step to take is to determine the sequence of the grit of the sandpaper.

The groove overlap is typically about 1 4 inch thick. For refinishing a hardwood floor you will have to sand over that floor multiple times. A typical first cut with an edger is 60 or 80 grit then completed with 100 grit after the floor has been filled. Sanding removes on average about 1 16 inch of material and sometimes.