Wooden Floors

I'll second that 'well done'! When I posted my experiences of trying to expose the floorboards in my dining room ( , two days removing carpet, underlay, grips, staples, making safe nails, relaying badly aligned boards, then a day laying rockwool insulation under the floor, then three days applying and waiting for woodworm treatment to dry, a weekend with a belt and a disc sander, then several days cleaning up, varnishing with three coats, and caulking and sealing the floorboard gaps, etc etc ), I had someone reply that he'd done his floorboards in one day and they looked fine! I'm glad to see someone else has gone about it the dedicated way and triumphed in the end!

cheers,

Andy.

Reply to
andrewpreece
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Having found some very useful tips on this group regarding snading floorboards and preparing them for use, I thought I would share my experiences in case anyone is planning on doing this again.

The room I was doing was only 10m2 and in a relatively new house. The floorboards were typical 1970's which would split when you tried to get under the boards to access any electrics or plumbing. Therefore I decided I wanted straight edged boards, screwed down in such a way that I could get underneath again with relatively little fuss if I needed to.

After getting some boards from B&Q and watching them warp out of all recognition after a few days out the packet, I decided I needed something which had been around a bit longer. Though not cheap I got some antique pine boards from a local supplier on the assumption that these would not shrink or warp as much.

Fortunately that turned out to be the case but they were not dead straight edged. It required quite a bit of planing to get the sides straight enough so the boards pushed together and there was no gap.

Having read books by Jeff Howell, I thought I should try and use floor brads to fix the boards, as much to keep the traditional look as anything else. However after 3 boards I found that I had to give up on the brads for several reasons. One, the boards were splitting at the end s despite sizeable pilot holes. Second, I was knocking the stuffing out of the ceiling below as I tried to get the brads in. And finally it was a pretty irreversible process and the boards just wouldn't be lifted without damage. I therefore decided to use recessed screws - especially as I had a automatic screw gun which could make the whole job easier.

A friend had recommended to drill down, scre in and then cut a lug to adhesive into the hole. However this would mean I could not easily remove the board if I needed. In the end I just used the screw gun and the screws were recessed slightly. However there the holes didn't look that neat after the screws were removed and replaced later. With hindsight I would have predrilled the holes 50% of the way through the board using a diameter slightly larger than the screw and then screwed down. I had to do this later anyway when it came to sanding but the job would have looked neater if I'd done it initially. Incidently I found using a small cheap drill stop from B&Q was the trick to ensuring I didn't drill down too far.

I should mention that the planing of the boards to fit together took me about 3 weekends. Maybe it would have been quicker had I been a more experienced woodworker or if I had a thicknesser. Without either of these the job seemed to take forever - satisfying at the end though.

Another thing to be aware of is pipes runs cut into the top of the joists. In my case I needed one board to span the cutting. All the other boards needed to be placed to work around this. With hindsight I would have fitted this first, rather than starting at one side of the room. It would have saved a lot of painstaking planeing later on.

Unfortunately I had assumed the boards that were supplied were all excatly the same depth - this is what I had asked for. When I came to fit them I found that they were quite different and I needed to fit about 10 shims to raise the some of the boards so that they were within a few mm of each other. With hindsight I may have taken some of these back to the supplier but it was a bit late by the time I found out. Even after the shims there were still some 5mm ridges between the boards.

When it came to sanding I had read here that ridges tended to rip off the sanding sheets from the floor sanders. I too found this to be the case. Fortunately however another poster to this group had recommended getting a anding attachment to a angle grinder to do the edges (rather than a hired floor edger). This was an inspired tip. However I decided to go one step further and use the same tool to get rid of the ridges by sanding them out. This worked a treat and I has managed to smooth out the whole floor within

30 minutes and without ruining any more of those expensive 24 grit sanding sheets. In the end I only had to use 1 of each sanding sheet (plus one extra shredded 24 grit due before I used the angle grinder) and the sheets hardly looked used afterwards.

Once the ridges were gone I was able to use the 24 grit across the boards using the floor sander and gradually get the boards flatter. In the end I got a 80 grit finish and while the boards were not dead flat - they had slight rises in the middle of some boards - they did look very good.

Finally I sanded the edges using the angle grinder. I had originally used it flat but found that it was quite easy to end up digging the near side of the disc into the board as you tried to sand down the far side. The best technique I found was to angle the disc back slightly with a little pressure on the back of the disc - then to make circle motions aroud the area that needed sanding. I finished with a cheap hand held delta sander and a lot of pressure. The delta sander got the corners done too.

Incidently when I did find that the angle grinder had cut too far I rectified the situation by a circular motion so that a got rid of the ridge and ended up with a slight depression. Not perfect but you dont notice it unless you look closely. I convinced myself it added to the character of the floor!

I have read that using a damp cloth to get up the dust can raise the grain again so I followed advice from here about just using a hoover. Fortunately I have a powerful Dyson which did the trick nicely (clean the filter regularly though as sawdust clogs it up).

Finally I decided to use Danish Oil to finish as suggested on this forum. Again this was inspired as the character of the boards really came through and they have a lovely warm glow now. I've put 4 coats on - the last one applied using a Scotch scourer pad. One thing I noticed is that the Danish Oil takes quite a lot longer to dry after the first cost. It was still a bit tacky after a night of drying. I found that one had to be careful when it was a liitle tacky (even after the 8 hour drying time recommended) as a careless step onto the boards left a dark shadow of a footprint. It came out easily after another application though.

I had been worried that the screw holes would ruin the naturel effect. In fact the fact that the scres are recessed means that they are not visible. I used black screws too, which means that the holes just look like features - albeit regular features - in the wood. Some of the screw holes could look neater, the wood having splintered a bit when recessed screws had been removed, but this would have been rectified by predrilling the recess holes.

Finally I was careful not to allow Danish Oil to fill up in the recess holes as I wanted to be able to get to the scres if required. One of the nice features of the Danish Oil is that it is aqueous enough to be easily removed from the holes using an absobent cloth - thats if it does get absorbed into the wood anyway.

Anyway I hope this is of some help to people planing on putting down or restoring traditional floorboards. Hopefully it adds to some of the excellent tips I found on the group.

Cheers

Elliot

Reply to
emv

Well done!

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

The last room I did took a day from start to finish, I did not fill gaps between the boards, the finish is excellent. Much as though I'd have loved to take longer to do it we needed to sleep in the room that night!

I have to do our sitting room at some point this year, it is huge and once again I need to do it in a day. Not looking forward to it :(

D
Reply to
DavidD

There's always one - but I doubt that they go to such lengths as you and the OP have done. Or wht we've done. Why, it took days just to get the poylurethane finish we wanted on our boards to say nothing of all the other processes which went before.

So am I. And that he kept such a good record and. It will be a far more realistic example to others than instant makeovers are.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

I prefer a 4" disc sander to an angle grinder. It has no guard to get in the way and the flexible backing disc reduces gouges. Packs of paper discs are very cheap and, although not designed to run at that speed, lasted long enough to make them economical.

Reply to
stuart noble

Thanks for the positive feedback. I'm glad it was worth reading.

Thanks to Stuart too for the tip about the disc sander. I'll look into getting one of those.

Elliot

Reply to
emv

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