How Not to Destroy Your Wood Floors When Sanding (Or, Floor Sanding Rules)
Sanding wooden floors with a drum sander or even an orbital sander is a big deal. I mean, a really big deal.
Myself, I hate hearing blowhard home renovation “experts” (like me) saying, “Ohh, that’s not safe” and “Watch out there, sonny!” But sanding wooden floors with a drum sanding is such a big deal that you can irreparably damage your floors if you do something wrong.
Spooky-Scary Dangers of Floor Sanding?
What are the dangers? The main thing is you can create deep grooves with a drum sander that you cannot sand out. It’s like: Well, I’ve got grooves now, got to live with them. That’s the short of it.
The other danger is far more remote: sanding so far down with the drum sander that you compromise the structural stability of your floor. Will it happen? Probably not. Could it happen? You bet. Really, there is no danger is sanding all the way down on one sanding project. It’s more like the accrual of many sandings that will destroy your floor.
Five Rules of Floor Sanding
- Start the sander first, then lower it down to the floor. This way, you’ve got the floor sander fully revved up before it touches the floor.
- Whenever stopping sanding, lift it off the floor first before shutting off the power.
- Do not let the sander stay in place for even half a second. That’s long enough to create grooves. Always keep the sander moving.
- Don’t push down on the sander. Let the weight of the sander do the work.
- Sand in the direction of the wood grain.
Oh Wait, Let’s Break Some Flooring Sanding Rules
With all that said and done, you can kinda-sorta break the last two rules:
- Don’t push on the sander? OK, right. But if you come to a particularly bad spot, you may need to push down. Unless that “bad spot” is some kind of ridge or bump that needs sanding out, you will create a groove. But maybe the groove is better than whatever bad thing you’re trying to sand out.
- Sand in the direction of the wood? Yes, do this. But like the broken rule above, you can occasionally sand at 45 degrees to the wood grain to take care of a problem.