Best tool option to sand down floors

[branimal]

I’m revisiting this thread to share a strange and accidental discovery i found when staining.

I couple months ago i stained my newly installed red oak kitchen floor to match the rest of the red oak surrounding the kitchen. (loftish space_).

It was a failed attempt. See pic of failed match vs original stain. The failed stain attempt never got a deep color to it.

Since then I’ve stained a handrail and knee wall by pretreating the wood with coffee (milk no sugar). The pretreated wood gets great color depth.

I clean the wood with a mineral spirits, followed by a coffee wipe down to get the wood slightly damp. I let it sit for a couple minutes and then hit it with the stain. I left the stain on for 40 minutes for the handrail and knee wall cover plate and then wipe it off. I’m going to shorten the wait time to 20 minutes today for my stair treads.

I may redo my kitchen floor using the coffee pretreatment.

So my question is, what the heck is going on? My guess is the moisture is opening up the wood fibers and water would work just as well as coffee.



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[topcok88]

I am no floor expert but I do a far amount of woodworking and finishing as a hobby. Not knowing what product was previously used to stain your floors is going to add too many variables to match effectively. As previous posters have pointed out there are pigmented stains and dye stains. And commonly if a manufacturer or woodworker is going to be changing the color of a light colored wood drastically (like red oak) a dye is going to be more effective to darken the base color. I have the same issues when wanting to darken birch ply and when previously trying Joca Bean like you had. Honestly the best recommendation is to sand all the floor(s) and re-finish as a whole. I do not envy the person who wants to try and match dark colored floors half way through one area or room. It would be like a auto body technician painting half of a car hood and trying to buff the two separately applied clear coat to give a seam free finish. It will never look good.

Edit - After further examining your old floor it appears to have those little edges that are routed/shaped onto the boards to soften the edges. If this was a factory applied pre-finished floor all bets are off to you being to accurately or effectively match not just the color but sheen. Those factory applied finishes are extremely durable and do an excellent job of covering grain and appearing “flat” to the eye. And the difference in floor finish will only increase as the angle of the eye to the two surfaces increases and light reflects off of the surface further accentuating the flaws.


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[Dberglind]

So are there any generic/Harbor Freight like floor sanders that can be had for under $1000, or are they pretty much a $3000 and up type of tool?

I'm looking to do sand nearly an entire level of my house in the coming year, and feel like anything under a $1000 would be a worthwhile investment that would allow me to take the time I need doing each room, finishing, moving furniture between rooms etc... rather than feeling like I am "on the clock" with a rental.

 

[kbs2244]

I believe coffee was used as a wood stain in Colonial times.
(Tea was the drink of choice, hence the "Party")

 

[JimNC]

Too many unanswered questions to be helpful, but some of you might enjoy a search for Stanley 74 Plane, they do a great job in conjunction with a scraper, but only on real/solid wood.

Cutting leaves the same prep level on all parts of the wood while sanding leaves a slightly different level of smoothness on hard vs soft parts of the board, this results in some parts taking a lot of stain and others taking almost none, especially if you oversand with a fine grit.

Also, never try to match while doing the floor, it never works. Never. Instead test on scraps, just sand and prep them exactly like the rest of the floor.

If you want dark, consider ebonizing, but if you really want black as night try India ink.

 

[branimal]

I am no floor expert but I do a far amount of woodworking and finishing as a hobby. Not knowing what product was previously used to stain your floors is going to add too many variables to match effectively.

Edit - After further examining your old floor it appears to have those little edges that are routed/shaped onto the boards to soften the edges. If this was a factory applied pre-finished floor all bets are off to you being to accurately or effectively match not just the color but sheen.


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I do know stain & brand the floors were stained bc I had them professionally done 5 years ago. It was getting the proper depth of stain I was struggling with and the coffee pretreatment seems to have helped the wood absorb the stain deeply.

As you say - even knowing that I won’t be able to match and the transition looks like ****.


Good catch on the routed edges. I’m not going to be able to match those.





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[Dumber than lumber]

I would go out and buy the appropriate Festool sander for this job. Hook it up to my Festool vacuum, and get to work.
Those Festool sanders will sand right up to the edge, and the dust collection is excellent.
It might take a few hours, but 130 SF should go fast. And at the end you still have the really nice sander.

 

[branimal]

So my attempt to stain the kitchen floors was a failure. (Inside pink arrows) The stain didn’t absorb as deeply as I’d hoped and now there’s a huge color mismatch. Since I’ve done the kitchen floor, I’ve learned how to get a closer match. See stairs. The first three are new steps and they are pretty close in color to the rest of the steps.

I’m going attempt to repair the botched kitchen job. My plan is to sand it all down and start again. But instead of ending halfway through the room, I’m going to sand inside the pink arrows all the way to the windows. And then re-stain.

I know sanding the whole room is the best plan, but I’d rather avoid that size of a job, because the room is massive.

Thanks.





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