Art and Science To Hardwood Floor Sanding

Sanding a floor doesn’t look like a technically difficult task, but it isn’t a skill you can pick up over a weekend. Technicians for professional hardwood maintenance companies are trained for six months or so before they are allowed to use a professional grade sander on a customer’s floor.

This is a good thing for you, the homeowner. All that hands-on training is done with commercial grade tools, not the little sanders they rent out at your local hardware store. Those will not effectively sand your floors. They are 110-volt sanders that plug into a standard wall outlet. They don’t have enough power or weight to properly sand a floor.

The machines used by Charlotte hardwood floor sanding technicians weigh about 250 pounds and they have powerful motors that will not stall when a floor is tough to sand. The balance and weight of these machines, along with the skill of the technicians, keeps them steady. A well-trained professional with a professional quality machine can sand your floor evenly the first time.

Older floors may not have enough solid wood left to handle the mistakes that amateur floor sanders can make. Floors sometimes become too thin if they are poorly sanded, and even hardwood floors can be ruined permanently by a well-intentioned DIY homeowner.

If you speak with hardwood specialists, they will almost always advise against sanding your own floor, or hiring a friend to do it for you, unless that friend happens to be a professional. DIY homeowners use a lot of rental time, too much sandpaper and the results are not usually good. It could even lower your home value if a hardwood floor is poorly sanded.

Rental sanders are only intended for light-duty use, and they often leave machine vibration marks (also called chatter marks) in the floor. This will not be visible until the finish or stain is applied. Then they will show up as waves or stripes that go against the natural wood grain. Machine vibration marks are obvious, and they are unattractive.

Rather than renting a machine and ruining a weekend – and potentially your floors – hire local professionals to sand your floors for you. They will do a thorough and proper job, and they won’t need to come back to finish defects in the wood