Our southeast-facing front bay window takes in a lot of direct sunlight. It also gets a lot of abuse from dogs looking out that window to monitor the front yard. About a year ago we noticed the finish was beginning to wear itself off the floor in areas. We also had another room, the study, that had worn patches of finish from the time we bought the house. We hoped Minwax Reviver would be enough but after a couple applications, we decided we would take the plunge and try our hands at refinishing.
We did a bunch of research. My favorite video was this one. We waited for spring because we knew we would have to have windows open because of the fumes and to aid with drying. We picked a weekend, emptied both rooms, I rented an orbital floor sander, and we spent an entire Saturday sanding down both rooms. We used my orbital palm sander for the detailed areas and my 1/4-sheet palm sander for the corners. The reason I rented the orbital floor sander instead of the drum sander was because I wanted to remove as little wood as possible. This is a 1930's house and its floors have already been refinished multiple times. I could tell by removing the HVAC registers.
The next day we vacuumed, wiped the walls down, wiped the floors down with mineral spirits, and began applying the finish. We selected an oil based, clear satin, super fast-drying polyurethane finish for floors. Clear satin to hide any future imperfections.
Shortly after applying the first coat, our air conditioning decided to kick in. Ahhhhh! We both forgot about it. It had been on for weeks but not warm enough to actually turn on...until today of course. It wasn't the air conditioning itself that got us. It was months worth of pet hair that had fallen into the vents, now blowing all over our wet finish.
And with that simple little problem, we had to start over. The hair was everywhere and the only way to remove it was to wait several days, then sand it down again.
I had to go out of town for work so Melissa ended up taking a Friday off work and sanding down both rooms with our orbital palm sander! I don't know how she managed but when I got home Friday night, both rooms were ready to go.
So after turning off the air conditioning, we spent Saturday reapplying three coats of finish and declared it a success. That may be the last time we ever refinish floors.
