Situations differ but you may not be able to refinish your hardwood floor more than 10 times.
More scratches show after sanding floor.
Refinish parts of the floor.
Pre finished wood flooring s multiple urethane and aluminum oxide layers form a tough skin that can defeat sanding and blending efforts.
Store and dispose of oil soaked rags properly.
Gently rub the scratch with the pad.
Use a colored wood putty that matches your floor.
Allow it to dry and wipe off.
Place it in the scratch with a plastic putty knife.
How to refinish a hardwood floor.
None of it is rocket science but it will help you to read through all the sanding pages including first things first working with sanders and edgers and the sanding faq before you begin.
Site finished wood flooring s protective coating is relatively easy to sand.
One important aspect of hardwood floor sanding and refinishing is restoration work.
You want to fix sanding mistakes before they re embedded and accented under a few thousandths of an inch of pigments dyes and resins.
Sanding a wood floor is a multi step process.
When using a 1 3 sheet or 1 4 vs.
Pigment stain doesn t penetrate the wood exactly the way a dye would but the pigment hangs up in the grain and sanding scratches hence the reason for minimizing them as much as possible.
An orbital sander there is an easy way to know that you have removed all the previous grits scratches.
How to fix scratches in hardwood floors.
Sanding cross grain tears the wood fibers so the sanding scratches show up much more especially under a stain.
Flooring experts estimate that hardwood floors can be sanded for refinishing up to 10 times depending on the thoroughness of the sanding and the level of wear and tear on the floor.
Be sure to rub the steel wool along the grain of the wood or you ll have more scratches to repair.
Once a finish and especially if a stain is applied the sanding scratches will become all that much more noticeable and pronounced.
The scratching that does occur is then more likely to be disguised by the grain of the wood.
That way you ll get a heads up on and hopefully the knowledge to avoid some of the problems you might encounter and some of the mistakes beginners make.
Learn how to inspect your sanding job between each grit.
The only way to remove scratches from a unstained wood surface is to sand it again this time moving in the direction of the grain.
The best policy is to always sand in the direction of the grain when possible.
Scratches that run parallel to the wood grain can be color blended more effectively than cross grain scratches.
For deeper scratches use lightweight sandpaper on the scratch.
Hardwood floor sanding and hardwood floor refinishing have many different purposes.
Sand smooth with 150 grit sandpaper after letting the.
To remove scratches from polyurethane coating moisten a scouring pad with mineral spirits.
Be sure to sand along the grain of the wood.