Floor Sander
Finally my floor sander is all buffed up and ready to go.
A Friday on holiday ruined by a good night out the night before. A meal and a few beers and I’m finished, I’m not built for this any longer. What should have been an early start on Friday morning became a long sleep in, a trudge to HSS tool hire for my sanders and an afternoon suffering on the couch before I could get my head in order to use heavy machinery.
Still once I started I was off and away, an afternoon start meant a midnight finish so I made up for lost time in spades.
The new floor drum sander and edge sander worked great this time, no more shredding of sandpaper. The ground work I’d done the previous weekend was useful too, it meant less of a slog getting off all the rough stuff, I could concentrate on getting the finish right this weekend. Still it did take some work and effort, the first job was to go over the full floor using some 40 grit paper in the floor sander, this was much easier than using the handheld belt sander and it quickly removed stubborn surface build-up, however there was a problem when it needed to get some of the more stubborn bits of paint/varnish/glob removed, so it was back to the belt sander. Basically the floor sander was quick and dirty for cleaning off the nasty surface mess in swathes but when you needed to get the nitty gritty sorted out it was back on ones hands and knees with the belt sander.
I had to work late as I’d lost a day and on Saturday I was spending the day with my lovely daughter so in the end I only l had the Sunday left to get the work finished as I only had a weekend hire of the sanders.
So Saturday was spent in idyll with my lovely daughter at my folks house, a day that should have been spent solely with my little girl did descend into watching the FA Cup final and Arsenal thrashing Aston Villa 4-0 but hey sometimes an armchair Gooner must make sacrifices. Anyway once I got home that evening I still was quite aware that there was little time to complete the project in the weekend, so again upon getting into my house, it was on with the dusty clothes to work late into the evening.
Polishing off a bit of heavy duty floor sanding and tidying up around the radiator legs with a detail sander I finished the day – and my belt sander – with a bit of rubbing out of more stubborn marks. This rubbed out the sander as it threw its drive belt and refused to work any longer. This would have been surprising for a big roughy toughy Makita, but I had worked it to death and the drive belt although important is an item that necessitates a change once in a while.
Next day, up early and back into sanding. It was important today that I got all the floor sanding out of the way. The edge work was going to be done using my belt sander – the edge sander provided with the kit was too fierce I thought for this job – so it would have to wait till I’d took delivery of my replacement drive belt I’d bought online. Still this was still a lot to do as the main floor took a lot of covering and I also needed to get the filling done too.
First thing in the morning I moved onto the next grade of paper and thoroughly sanded the entire floor using an 80 grit paper. Next I moved onto the 120 grit and again sanded the entire floor, again meticulously. Between each sand I went over the full area with a brush and I even managed a hoover at one stage.
This all took time and by this point I was well into the afternoon, these rub downs were in no way more difficult than the first 40 grit sands but they needed to be done meticulously so it took some time to get them both done thoroughly.
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Next it was onto the filling, the floor looked great by now, the boards were lovely and smooth, they were now revealing the quality of the pitch pine. I’m not a great lover of pine but pitch pine has a slight red tone to it, it’s very subtle and has a hint of cherry wood about it, it’s much nicer than modern stark pines. Pitch pine is authentic Victoriana, it is in keeping with the period of the house, the notion of saving one floor from the three/four sacrificed fills me with a bit of pride. It was hard work but there’s an authentic, Victorian floor in my house now, it’s also improved as I cherry picked the best boards, discarded all the woodwormy and rotten ones, I insulated completed underneath and even supported the floorboards with sheets of plywood to stop any creaking. These floorboards have a history too, apart from being part of the house they could have been sourced from some ancient sailing ship, as pitch pine was sometimes re-used when a ship was dismantled. I know that some may shy at the idea of not having a hardwood floor but trust me these boards have hardened over time and at 26mm of solid wood they’re far superior to some of the more modern off-the-shelf equivalents out there.
Anyway I digress, but who knows my floorboards could have been at Trafalgar.
The filler I had chosen was a resin based one called Lecol 7500, I picked up the tip from a website where a chappie has just about the most in-depth outlook on flooring and finishing in wood. It’s well worth a lookie:
Basically you save your last finest sawdust from the last 120 grit sanding and mix it into a sloppy paste with the Lecol 7500 resin, then one liberally spreads it over the floor. This goes off very quickly and you quickly develop a hasty approach to spreading it into place. I basically watched a YouTube video on how to do the technique, the bloke on the video had arms like pit props but even he seemed out of puff by the end of the floor. I know I found it tough and upon standing back to admire my work my thoughts were “well that’s ruined it” it looked a complete mess.
However…. a quick sand with 120 grit and things improved massively. The floor now looked wonderful, all the cracks had gone, all the nail holes had disappeared it just looked amazing. In fact it looked too perfect, the effect was so seamless it looked like an off-the-shelf manufactured finish. I think some people may have preferred the holey, cracky Victorian look but I think the remit of the job is to get a contemporary perspective on a traditional look so this fits the bill perfectly.
In my eyes though it still wasn’t perfect, so back to mixing up the resin (keep a window open it is pretty far-out stuff this resin, phew) and coating it less liberally around the floor, back to the floor sanding and now an even more perfect finish.
By this time it was getting late and I needed to get ready for work in the morning. So a quick dismantle of the sanders, a tidy up and everything downstairs for an early start in the morning.
Off to bed at 12:30 when all was done and a 5:50am start in order to get the sander back to the hire company before work and two days of 12 hour shifts at work.
A bit busy
Anyway the very nice people at HSS tool hire recognised my dilemma and the delays that had ensued by one dodgy sander and one wrong booking and were super-generous and charged me only £15 for what should have been cracking on for a £100 hire. How good are they, I feel pretty awful that I may have complained earlier.
So a weekend of spurious and hard work dotted between bits of laziness and daughter sitting. Late night and early morning sanding, filling, sweeping and tidying, followed by little sleep a mad morning dash and working at my day job late into the evening for two days on the trot.
Hopefully on Wednesday I’ll be in receipt of my new drive belt and I can get on with some edge work and finish off with some varnish by the end of the week.