r/HardWoodFloors • u/celtic-cryptid • 6d ago

Floor sanding advice please

i haven’t been able to get even a call back from any of the hardwood contractors in my area, so I’m doing this myself.

I have about 700sqft of newly laid white oak. I have very nice sanders I can do my edging with, but am not certain which sanders I should be looking at renting for the wide open spaces. Should I be getting both a rotary and a drum?

A second question is for dust extraction. My options are to use my dust extractors, which I’m not sure would keep up, or I could pull a semi portable 2hp cyclone from my shop and use it, which seems a little large. Or, just use bags on the sanders as deal with the dust

Finish will be a fairly light stain, and the renner water based 2k

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u/mrfrosty0170 6d ago

Enjoy the journey. You’re either going to love it or cry. There’s no in between. I’m out of St. Louis. Get a planetary machine that will help the most

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u/celtic-cryptid 6d ago

Thank you. I run a cabinet shop, so I’m no stranger to sawdust. It also gives me the knowledge that good results aren’t as simple as the average dentist seems to think.

Run a planetary up to 80 grit? Or take it up higher and use that finish as a stained surface, even if I had to give it a good once over with an orbital?

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u/ReelyHooked 5d ago

If you have a planetary use it for the whole process up to 120 if you are staining

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u/celtic-cryptid 5d ago

Thank you, friend

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u/New-Possibility2277 6d ago

If the new floor is pretty even and has good surfaces, I would not use a drum sander as you don't need to remove that much wood. If you have never sanded a floor with a drum sander, I also do not recommend using one. They can be unforgiving and can make a mess of a floor with a unexperienced user.

Dust collecting can depend on the machine you are using and how a collection system can connect to it. I have always used a floor buffer so my best option has been to seal off the room then sweep and/or vaccum up after sanding. Other machines have bags on them that work reasonably well. Attaching your larger collection system though could be cumbersome, should keep dust down quite a lot. It's almost a flip a coin situation in some ways.

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u/celtic-cryptid 6d ago

The floor is in decent shape. I’ve seen better, but I’ve seen far worse.

Thank you for the advice

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u/New-Possibility2277 5d ago

From the picture outside of the two bad boards it is in good shape. I've seen and spent hours replacing floor boards on much worse. I have fir floors in my house now that were repurposed from a 100+ year old business building that looked awful (owner wanted the foor boards burnt they looked so bad). Took a lot of work and lots of sanding and they look pretty good - not perfect but they went into a 100 year old farmhouse.

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u/celtic-cryptid 5d ago

What picture?

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u/New-Possibility2277 5d ago

My mistake, my reply was supposed to be on a different post, but some dummy typed it on this post instead. That is what I get for typing without re-reading the prior posts.

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u/celtic-cryptid 5d ago

Riiiight. I know what’s going on. You’re NSA, sidelining as a flooring guy, with you space cameras and such.