Renovations...Sanding the floor

Once the house was painted we could finally, finally sand and polish the timber floor. You may, like many of our family and friends, believe that the floors look great as they are based on the photographs I've shared. I'm sorry to say, I've deceived you. I usually took photographs of the house and the end of each stage of work when we had cleaned everything up. This usually involved me mopping the floors so I took photos immediately after...as a result, in some shots we appear to have beautifully polished floors. We didn't.

The floor has an original coat of sealer applied after the kitchen was installed but before most of the house was carpeted. It makes the floors appear finished but if you had seen them in person you'd know there was marks from carpet underlay, plenty of nail holes from the carpet, hundreds of tack holes from the kitchen lino (one every 10cm!), unpolished areas of floor (under the kitchen benches and a random part of the hallway) and lots of scratches and dents on the originally exposed areas of flooring (the dining room and hallway).

So the floor really did need to be redone, it was a 'need' as much as a 'want'. We hired a drum sander (operated by Dad) and an edge sander (operated by SJ) and the floor was stripped back over a weekend. We filled all the holes with a dark wood filler, in the kitchen it was watered down to make a slurry which we swooshed around the whole floor to fill the holes. Some had to be refilled after it dried but it was a much faster method than the traditional scrape and fill we used for the bigger holes. Prior to sanding we also checked over every inch of the floor to punch any wayward nails.

The worst of the floor, showing the widened doorway between kitchen/dining + scratches in the dining floor + tack holes in the kitchen floor

The originally exposed timber floor in the hallway, all the dark black marks are scratches

The unfinished floor in the linen cupboard, the timber lino to the left is over unfinished timber as well

The kitchen with some test runs, the unfinished timber under the old kitchen, drum sander, my Mum and my neice

Living room floor after the first run, all the dark blobs are filled holes 

Dining/Kitchen sanded

Hallway floor sanded (most of the scratches came out)

Bed 2 sanded

Main bed sanded

Bed 3 sanded

Living area sanded