Stained floorboards

[Dave55]

Hi there, I'm a newbie to this site and I'm really glad I found it, there seems to be a lot of great advice here, I'm just starting renovating an old property in sunny Llansteffan and I wonder of anyone has tried sanding floorboards that have been stained as in the photo? Will the floor sander take off the dark colour or will it be a losing battle.( the scratched off bits were already like that)

 

[Feltwell]

Judging by the scratched off bits it'll come up just fine!

The expert on here for all things to do with wood finishing is Toby Newell, he has some DIY guides on his website that'll give you a lot of what you need to know

https://newellwoodworks.co.uk/

 

[Cubist]

Depends on whether its paint or a stain.

Paint sits on the surface and a variety of methods and tools will remove it effectively albeit that some will have got into nicks and crevices but these too can be removed with some patience.

If its a stain then it may have penetrated the wood to some, hopefully small, degree and much sanding may then be needed to get a uniform finish across the floor.

Try a sandpaper test in a small, unobtrusive, area to find out which.

Judging by the sheen in the area covered previously by a rug its possible the boards were waxed at some point. If you're really lucky the wax was applied to whole floor before the paint/stain was applied. Thats unlikely but if it was then the paint/stain may be easier to remove.

 

[LadyArowana]

Our living room looked like that under fitted carpet. It was sanded off ( we had someone do it, apparently used a lot of the sanding pads as they get gunked up ) and came out looking really nice, and was then mostly covered by a big carpet!

 

[RBailey]

One of ours had the black gunk treatment, I got a bunch of extra sanding sheets and it came off fine.
(I bought the sanding pads from eBay, a fraction of the cost the hire company wanted, made it much more tolerable to gunk and bin them.)

 

[Toby Newell]

Hi there, I'm a newbie to this site and I'm really glad I found it, there seems to be a lot of great advice here, I'm just starting renovating an old property in sunny Llansteffan and I wonder of anyone has tried sanding floorboards that have been stained as in the photo? Will the floor sander take off the dark colour or will it be a losing battle.( the scratched off bits were already like that)View attachment 9687

I is he of the Newell persuasion.

FYI lovely wide boards, what are they 10 - 11 inches? Super condition, very flat and very tight gaps, that suggests tongue and groove or loose tongues, if not then super stable conditions.

Stain probably asphaltum, does not look thick, sometimes it's a pig, sometimes it's very easy, yours looks fairly easy. Wax is moot, as is soaking in, asphaltum is more like tarmac than it is a penetrative stain and any waxing (the boards do look waxed) would of been done after the dark 'staining' its not really a stain, it's thinned out asphalt / tar / bitumen.

The issue is it melts and clogs the abrasives so either you use 5x more or use a coarser abrasive or give yourself rsi with scraper, the choice is yours.

Bit of a shame because it's so flat you could sand the whole thing with a Trio, the bituminous stain and wax will eat discs. Tricky one, if you can.get the Lagler machines in your area get them all, personally I would remove the stain with P24 - P40 on an edge sander then start the belt sander off on P36 or if you have access to the excellent Lagler belts, P40, then P50 or P60 and hop onto the Lagler Trio P60, P80 then P120, or use a screeder with similar.

 

[Dave55]

Thanks everyone for your advice, it's greatly appreciated!

 

[Mrs McG]

When I sanded floorboards (nowhere near as nice as yours!) I kept the sawdust and used it to fill in small gaps between the boards. Might be worth you doing the same, after you’ve lifted the worst of the stained wood and thrown that sawdust away.