Hot Floorboard Action!!

[thiambal]

Well not quite as exciting as the title suggested perhaps.

The floor boards in my dining room have been sanded by a previous occupant - badly. They have taken off a good couple of mm of wood and left sanding marks in places and then coated with a nasty varnish which has developed an unpleasant orange hue. The gaps between the boards have been filled some sort of caulking that has disintergrated and fallen through in some places and it stuck fast in others.

I want to give them a new lease of life but obviously do not want to use a big sanding machine again or I am likely to end up with paper thin boards.

I have tried sanding a little patch by hand with 120 grit sandpaper and the old varnish comes off reasonable easily and leaves a very nice coloured board beneath.

So the plan is this.......sand the boards with one of those electric sanders than only agitates the paper.... like this one

http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp?cId=100377&ts=51596&id=28800

which I figure will give the same effect as hand sanding but with less elbow grease.

As you sand the remaning caulking loses all its layer of dirt and becomes quite white which is not ideal - but it is proving impossble to remove with taking all the boards up which I do not want to do. I may just leave it and live with it.

I will then seal and finish with something hard wearing and quick drying as the room is my only route to the kitchen. Probably that Bona Traffic Stuff that Toby has recommended before now - anyone got any experience of applying this?

So, does anyone see any flaws in this plan?

 

[NT]

When I did mine I used a stock removal type sander to remove the black paint, and it did it at a decent speed. Using a jiggly thing would have taken forever.

I'm a bit surprised you cant remove the caulk, I wonder what material it is. At the worst it might be lightly stainable with the help of an artists brush. White would really grin otherwise.


NT

 

[thiambal]

A fairly light sanding by hand has had a good effect and I do not want to use anything too aggressive.

Christ knows what the Caulk is. Some of it is hard and brittle and just breaks away and falls through the boards. Other areas it is still adheres very well and has a texture a bit like old chewing gum. The really dirty stuff had a the look of very close grained cork about it.

 

[Penners]

Perhaps it's old chewing gum. :wink:

I would be reluctant to leave it, if I were you. As some of it is already crumbling and falling through, I suspect you may be committing yourself to years of patch-up work as random bits do this over the months and years to come.

Despite the extra work, it might be best to bite the bullet and get rid of it all now. Perhaps a hammer and old chisel would break it up sufficiently for it to come out.

You could then do a proper job with fillets of wood. But remember only to glue them on one side. If you glue them on both sides, then any shrinkage could cause splitting.

 

[Moo]

I know you said you're reluctant to take up the boards, and I'll probably be shot down in flames for suggesting it, but why not take them all up and re-lay them without gaps? I know you'd be left with something approaching a board-width gap at one end, but that could be filled by 'borrowing' one from another room that's due to be carpeted.

 

[Nemesis]

Boards are not always easy to take up, and damage can ensue.

 

[Moo]

That's because they didn't have the sense to screw them down in the first place. Most inconsiderate.

 

[Gervase]

It's the relaying that's a bugger - it seems to be sod's law that whenever you re-lay boards there's always something that makes them a millimetre out. You end up having to sand them fairly robustly to set them all level again.
For general sanding work I'm a fan of belt sanders - on a low speed with a medium grit they don't have to remove vast amounts of stock.
Is the caulk papier mache? It might be possible to replace like-with-like in that case.

 

[Lime]

I have used a sander such as that in Screwfix to sand several floors.
They work well with the right paper.
I found grade 80 or 60 clogged least.
Sanding along the grain removes old varnish and scrape marks well.

It is common for people unused to using large sanders to dig quite large dents/dips in floorboards, particularly when they come to the ends of the room.

 

[biffvernon]

I have used a sander such as that in Screwfix.

I bought a sander from Screwfix. When the little rubber drive belt broke after a few months of regular use I phoned them up to ask for a new belt. They said they don't deal with spare parts so would send me a new sander. I told them that was rather silly as the belt was worth maybe 10p and the sander was £50. No matter.
When the little rubber drive belt in my replacement sander broke after a few months of regular use I phoned them up to ask for a new belt. They said they don't deal with spare parts so would send me a new sander. I told them that was rather silly as the belt was worth maybe 10p and the sander was £50. No matter.

 

[thiambal]

I am not fussed about there being gaps between the floor boards to be honest. It keeps a good old draft running through and as there is relatively little cross ventilation under the floor at least with the back door open you get a good old passage of air under the house and through the floor boards. I figure that as the rest of the caulking falls out the ventilation will improve.

I have considered the fillets of wood option, but i would imagine that they are a ball ache to sand down if you are not going to use a big mechanical sander. Does anyone have experience to the contrary?

I have considered the taking up and relaying option, but seems far too much work and with old joists hammering back down is questionable and I do not really want screw heards to cover everywhere.

As for sanding do people reccomend a variable speed belt sander rather than one of those reciprocating jobbies?

 

[Lime]

I have considered the fillets of wood option, but i would imagine that they are a ball ache to sand down if you are not going to use a big mechanical sander. Does anyone have experience to the contrary?

If you are happy with the gaps why bother?

 

[Gervase]

As for sanding do people reccomend a variable speed belt sander rather than one of those reciprocating jobbies?

The oribital jobbies are really for finishing work, using fine grits. If you're sanding boards the chances are there'll be all sorts of pits and scratches in the wood, and an orbital sander is going to take a long time to rub down to the level of those.
A belt sander will do the job a lot quicker. They need to be used with a bit of care - press too hard or linger too long in one spot and you will make a mark, and they're not as tolerant of nailheads as an orbital, but that aside, a belt sander is what I would choose.