Timber Floor Sanding Newcastle

1. Timber Flooring Sanding Contractors Freedom Flooring

2. Freedom Flooring is a family owned and operated business with expertise in sanding & re-surfacing timber floorboards for residential & commercial properties. • Here's a basic set down of our sanding process

3. The 13 Steps In Our Process Determine your grit sequence. Did you know that refinishing a floor means that you’ll sand over your floor multiple times? Some first-time sanders believe that they’ll just use one grit of sandpaper and sand over their floors one time and, voila!, the floors will be clean, flat and smooth.

4. The 13 Steps In Our Process Here is a rough guideline for what the various grits do: Step 1: • 12grit (available for edger's only): starting grit for floors with heavy adhesive or multiple coats of floor paint • 16grit: starting grit for floors with heavy shellac finishes or single layers of paint and sometimes for very old, hard maple floors (this is an unfortunate but common starting grit here in the Twin Cities, as you can see in the photo at right) • 24grit: starting grit for floors that still have finish or haven’t been sanded for 30 years or more. 24grit is the recommended starting grit if there is sander flaw in the floor from previous sanding's or obvious foot-soiled areas where old finishes have worn through to wood • 36grit: starting grit for floors that are newly installed or have very minimal finish. Every trace of finish should be gone from your floor by the time you finish with this grit. • 60grit: Never a starting grit – 60grit takes out 36grit scratch, but it does not remove wood or finish • 80grit: takes out 60grit scratch, but does not remove wood or finish –Final grit pass for most American hardwood floors • 100grit: Takes out 60 or 80grit scratch. Final grit for birch and maple floors and any floor that will be stained

5. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 2: • Sand all the main field areas with the drum sander using your pre-determined starting grit. • For each grit pass you make on your floor, you will begin with the drum sander. • Don’t just sand one room at a time – sand everywhere the drum can reach in every room in your project. • If you’re sanding floors on two different storeys, do everything on the upper level first and then sand downstairs; you only want to haul those machines upstairs one time.

6. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 3: • Use the edger (using the same grit you just used on the drum) to sand all the areas that the drum couldn’t reach. • For every grit you do, drum first and edge second. This is largely because the edger can sand out drum marks that you might leave during the transition at the wall edge.

7. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 4: • Sweep or vacuum all sanded rooms. • Every time you finish a grit you need to vacuum, or at least sweep all the surfaces you just sanded. This is because the pieces of sanding mineral fall off the abrasive and litter the floor after every grit pass.

8. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 5: • Sand all main field areas with the drum sander on the next grit in the determined sequence. • Once you’ve vacuumed, you’re ready to begin again with the drum on the next, finer grit step in your sanding sequence.

9. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 6: • Use the edger (using the same grit you just used on the drum) to sand all the areas that the drum couldn’t reach. • Make sure to use the same level grit sanding paper for this step.

10. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 7: • Repeat steps 4 through 6 until you have sanded the entire floor through 80grit. • So, now you’ve established your pattern, it’s just a matter of sanding without skipping grits until you reach either 80 or 100grit. 100grit is the recommended finishing grit if you plan to stain your floors, or if you are sanding a maple floor. • In both those cases, particularly on the edger, you need to work harder to make sure that all evidence of your sanding is removed, which is easier to do when you can sand to a finer grit.

11. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 8: • Use a edger to sand under all toe-kicks if you have them. • You’ll get a better blend with the cut from the drum sander and edger if you sand your radiators or under your toe-kicks after all the other sanding is done. This also keeps your rental of that extra sander down to an absolute minimum.

12. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 9: • Scrape or sand all corners and around radiator feet or pipes. • Edger's are round, but rooms are square, so you’ll need to do something in the four corners of every room, closet or stair tread In your project. Carbide scrapers are great, but can be expensive. Carbon steel scrapers are cheap and work well, but you’ll have to keep sharpening (often once for every corner) because carbon steel dulls quickly when you’re scraping finish.

13. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 10: • Examine perimeter of all rooms and remove any visible edger swirl by hand-sanding. • No matter how long you have been sanding floors, no matter how skilled you are with the edger, there will still be edger swirl left around the perimeter of your room, even after you finished sanding through 100 grit. And even if you didn’t skip any grits!

14. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 11: • Use a pole sander or a buffer over the entire floor at 100 or 120 grit to blend the straight sanding cut from the drum with the circular sanding cut from the edger. • Using 100 or 120grit, you will put a shallow, but most importantly uniform scratch pattern over the entire floor. This will fool your finish into believing that only one machine left its mark on your floor and it will absorb uniformly into the wood and will look consistent and blotch-free everywhere.

15. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 12: • Vacuum the entire area thoroughly. Vacuuming twice never hurts and usually helps. • Getting all the dust off is more important than we can ever say. Pay particular attention to the dust in the cracks between the boards and at the very edges of the room, especially the gap under the baseboards. Finish has a way of finding little hidden pockets of dust and pulling it up and spreading it along with your mop head.

16. The 13 Steps In Our Process Step 13: • Use a dry microfiber cloth or other clean, lint-free textile to remove all remaining dust from the floor. • Many people would use a commercial tack cloth for this step, but we don’t recommend it. This is perhaps the most vital step for a perfect finish to your coating

17. Contact Us Freedom Flooring Newcastle http://www.freedomflooring.com.au/services/floor-sanding-newcastle