City of Bloomington, MN Home Improvement Seminars, 26 Jan 2012

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From YouTube: Bloomington HRA: Hardwood Floor Refinishing (2010)

Description

Learn the step by step process of refinishing Hardwood Floors.

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We are hosting these seminars is summer to just kind of promote some of the activities of the housing authority offers. We prepare home improvement loan programs which are described as of brochures on the front table, and tonight we're going to have Jake translator talk about Carter floor refinishing. Jake was an intern in our office last year, while he was getting a degree from the University and while he's going to university, he worked for primary or, and he won everybody over in our office with his personality. So everybody else a little bit about that tonight.

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So I'm gonna give Jake.

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Alright, so yeah, my name is Jake Tom, Sager and I'll just get into PowerPoint. If I think.

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It's better to set up this.

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Way, if there's any questions throughout the entire PowerPoint, just raise your hand will be right there. I know this may be a lot of questions at the end, you half hour from pier questions different finishes to progress.

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Ij Tom Sager I am a year.

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Ago, I graduating University of Minnesota and Housing Studies and sustainability, a loved one I'm working for my boss, dick anderson crime, hardwood floors, not supposed employment company, that's what I work for and we together I think right now is working them. Richard, Commission, 392, no system. You may look at that. I'm young, but I've been a lottery functions till he got there.

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Actually, I'm priceless I, always into college and I was priceless. I had worked the eps for six years in the evening, this part-time supervisor that pays my bills, but I wanted to have a job or other many traits. I've done she robbed of construction, and it was something more technical, I feel able to get into carpentry, but crime. Marble floors had operating up there before.

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For manual labor and I emailed him- and there was 65 people that emailed him since he put up the post and he said I- don't really know where to go with this I said all right. Well, what are you doing right now?

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He said I'm refinishing, the house on the campus of the U of M, so I said all right if I skip class and come work for you for a day, and you like my work ethic, will you hire me so I worked for him for 10 hours and actually skipped my night shift at UPS and he hired me on the spot. So that's how I got that job? It is a good story, but alright, so refinishing. Your hardwood floors, I'm, basically going to talk about how you as a homeowner, would do it.

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I can also I'm going to show the machines that we're going to use, but everything that I'm going to talk about is something that you could rent and that you could do yourself so start to finish what it takes to turn a floor from this into this and sorry, I'm in the way. Alright. So getting your getting started, doing it yourself, every single tool. That's up here! You can rent. Like I said I'm going to talk about the steps I'm going to talk about the color sustain the types of finish.

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What you can do if you have pets, whether it's a hundred dollars a gallon for poly or it's five dollars a gallon for Pauly and what's going to be the benefit of either of those so tools on your top right is the belt sander. We like to call it the big machine, not that professional.

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All it is, is a large belt sander, a drum sander it the machine itself, weighs probably 220 pounds and that weight is to help level out the floor. So if you have an uneven floor, this is the machine. That's going to do the most work in grinding off the finish and like I said this is about you can come and see it afterwards. Next is the edger, so the big machine is going to handle all the large surface area.

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You could do ninety percent of this room with the big machine or the belt sander, and the edger, which takes a pad like this, goes along the entire edge of the room and I'll show photos of all this as well.

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Third is the scrapers you'll use those for the corners, because, obviously a round disks cannot fit into a square corner and then second, the last step is the buffer which you use before you coat and the palm orb, which you also use around the edges, because the buffer cannot get to the edge so sanding for step, one like we do with our company and I think most homeowners should as well.

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You want to keep the dust in the location where you're saying you don't want it to go to your entire house, so plastic off the livable area, just cheap plastic and painters tape works. Then the question comes to keeping your trim and baseboard like on this. The stream right here there's no base a baker. Sorry, there's no shoe so that's the baseboard, then there's usually a cord around or a shoe that goes on. As the finishing touch it's easier for the hardwood floor, refinisher if at least the shoe is removed.

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If you want to remove the shoe and the base, then it's even better because you get all the way like most homes in Bloomington, which are all 1040s, which you guys have a ton of 1040 being the square footage of most homes in the city.

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Everyone has hardwood floors throughout so that hardwood floor goes underneath the trim. If you stand twice and you don't take off the shoe or the baseboard, then you're going to get a little bit of a lip.

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So the floor will be at this level and obviously where the original floor was and where the Truman besar it's going to be at this level, so ideally rip off the shoe rip off the base, but mostly, if you're just going to refinish it for the first time, I'd rip off less you just so you can get really close and then obviously debris and personal items removed, especially art picture frames. Pictures mirrors we've got a lot full, which my boss doesn't like to pay for all right so getting started.

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This is the first step after you plastic. Everything off is the walk-behind belt sander, it's this one that uses this drum and all it is it's a 220 volt machine, so it hooks up to your washer or your oven. If you have an electric oven, it's got a bag that attaches at the top of a long hose which shoots sawdust into there's.

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Some companies that have dustless equipment so they'll have a vacuum hose that hooks up to that attachment, which is very good for keeping them dust down, but still you're going to get saw dust and dust all throughout the area. So this is just a walk-behind machine which you can rent to any rental center. All it is, is it's one lever on top you push the lever down that drops this belt sander onto the floor and the Machine actually pulls itself.

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So there's a lot of resistance in your arms from this 220 pound machine revving at I, don't even know 3,000 rpms per minute. So it's it's a pretty powerful machine. I guess I'll get into that. So say you had a really deep scratch near floor or your floors uneven in one spot from a previous sanding, or maybe somebody gouged out a half of an inch and you not a half and a quarter of an inch and you need to get down to a sandable level with the big machine.

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What you can do is you can cross cut. You should always be going with the grain when you're saying in anything in life, but if you need to cut down deeper and deeper in the floor instead of running it straight along these boards and Diggy down on a certain path, you cross cut to even out that area going both ways and then you go over the floor again with the grain so that you use that technique. If you have a large scratch.

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So yeah three times use this machine in the entire process. The first and then I'll go through the next step and then two more times after that and we'll go to the next step, so edging sans the edge with a belt sander with the belt sander can't and that's the edge. It's very fast-moving, very hard to control takes a lot of time to get the hang of it and again you have to go with the grain and you have to have supreme control over this machine well stuff about it.

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Is you see this guy right here? Bending over you can go on your knees, but your knees are going to slide because it's a freshly sanded floor. Your shoes are going to slide because it's a freshly sanded floor, everything slides because it's a freshly sanded floor. So you have this machine, that's moving very, very fast and you have to slow it down because say you're going along the say this table is the edge of the floor and you're going along it and you slip and the machine comes out.

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Now you have a huge gouging, the floor that you then have to go back over with the edger or the big machine, and it's just a lot of hassle. It took me probably three months to be able to completely master that working with my boss and he didn't give me the Rays until I was able to master it. So it's also back-breaking. That's this is the hardest part. Sanding is the hardest part of refinishing, the floors.

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We do a job a week, Monday Tuesday and Wednesday other worse days, half a day, Wednesday and Thursday and Friday our cake days. We come in, we coat, we leave after three hours, ah so step number four after you got the large area. You got the edges now you're going to need to scrape the corners this round disk, and definitely this cannot reach in the corners. They do have machines like this. It's a multi-tool craftsman now makes one for $90. We have one that was made in Germany this one.

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Actually, that's like six hundred dollars, but we actually never use it. We always use hand scraping because that gets close. It's cheap blades are cheap and gets the job done again. You're going to want to go with the grain, you never want to go against the grain and with scrapers. You have to be very careful as well, because if you twist it off of that level, plane you're going to go ad right down into the floor as well.

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Alright so sanding the floor, like I said you use the big machine three times or the belt sander three times use the edger three times depending on the severity of the scratches in your floor, my house, when I purchased it in south Minneapolis, was built in nineteen fourteen and when I bought it in two thousand, eight, the floors had never been refinished the entire time. So I spent 13 hours myself with my boss, sanding the floors in that house.

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We had to go from 24 grit to 40 to 60 to 80, and that's where I put down here, I'll grits, subject to floor condition, scratched water, stained, 24, 40, 60, 80 again with the edger. You only have to do it twice so 40 grit, then an 80 grit belt, sander, 40, 60 80.

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You always want a vacuum between your grits as well, because, obviously, if you sand with a 24 and there's going to be pieces of 24 sand on that floor, so the 40 grit belt sander is going to pick up those 24 pieces of sand and put 24 great garages in the floor instead of the 40. So make sure you always vacuum and then lightly scuffed florists say you have a floor. That's less than five years old and there's just surface scratches on it. Nothing too deep. You can't see any dark lines or dark marks.

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A really affordable option is to have a buffing coat. That's used, I'll show you the buffer in a little bit, but it's just buffing the large area Paul more in the corners, and then you put on a new coat of poly, which will fill in a lot of the surface cracks and scratches, and I feel myself going fast.

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So if I am and I'm skipping something let me know so, this would be after the three sands with the belt sander 40, 60 80 and the two edger runs 40 and 60, and you Paul more of the corners and scrape the corners. You buff the entire floor. Using a round buff, we use a round buff. There's other machines called 3d esas, where you can rent those as well at the Home Improvement Center. They have three individual disks like this that are like random palm orbs, random Paul board and it vibrates.

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So you can go any direction on the floor and it won't scratch it and that's what three yeses we don't like to use them as much, because they leave circular tail marks pig tails. We call them in the floor which a lot of orbs do as well. They leave those pigtail marks on the floor, so we have best luck using the method that I'm telling you, but again, depending on the previous scratches on the floor, 80 or 100 grit. We mostly use 100 grit on the buffer.

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It's a large disk like this, and it covers a lot area quickly. That'll probably take a room like this 30 minutes to buff. It.

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So step number: seven: you want to get the sg's in a paul board or a square buff. The palmer is more efficient because it rotates and it moves a lot faster than just a vibrating square, buff paul more so you use a palm orb on the long surfaces and the square buff in the corners to get where you scraped and after the trial like a set of expensive tools that claim to do the job. This is the winning combination.

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There are plenty of edgers out there that sell for seven hundred dollars, but a sixty-dollar palm orb is going to do the job way better, which is actually what you can say in your entire floor with. If you have enough time to patients- and you want to spend a lot in grit, so you're done with sandy and that's that's it for sanding you're completely finished after you do that final vacuum go ahead. A couple.

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Questions back when you have to begin digging same. What do you do when you're switching from one lane, the other without food allergies, are screeching at the bottom of the most important satisfied, yeah and the other thing if it weighs 250 pounds those things come apart, yep.

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So the neck comes off. That's like five pounds. The bottom, which is all aluminum, comes out. The electric motor comes off of that which is connected by two belts, and that's it. The motor is the most expensive and in this weather, is the hottest. So you can't touch it for probably 45 minutes after you get done saying, because it's so hot yeah you're right. You always want to move from right to left when using the big machine or the belt sander.

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What you want to do, what we do. We mostly do inch and a half floors. So that's your old school! That's your every house in the city of Bloomington, almost unless it's been new. If, unless it was made past nineteen, fifty probably then they started using two and a quarter inch boards but inch and a half boards of the real skinny one. We go an entire board each run. So this is about this wide right. It obviously probably has four or five six boards in the belt path.

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We go over one board every single time, so that far right edge of the belt is always cutting the hardest. Finish off, these are sanding a little bit more and more per board, and then, when you that the only reason we do, that is because, when you get to the end of the life the belt instead of scrapping out the entire belt, all you do is flip it, and now you have the sharpest side and the dullest side over there.

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So on a floor like this, this is two and a quarter inch, if not a little bit more, because it's fake, which I don't like when you're going down your lanes, you go straight down when you're at the end, don't even worry about not coming straight back, go aboard over as soon as you can and come straight back when you're out this side move a board over go all the way down, and the biggest thing with the belt sander is the fact that you have this thing grinding.

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Your floors intensely you're the one that levers up before it gets the wall. If you hit the wall, if you stop you're going to have one second you'll have a gouge this deep in your floor, that you won't be able to get out and that's where the technique comes in and that's what scares most people are both doing it themselves is. If you screw up one time, you have a gouge that deep good.

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Ahead, you're walking backwards, you're walking forwards with a cord over your shoulder and you're kicking the cord off to the side as you're walking backwards and I've ran over a cord before too so any other questions. So.

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You're saying you're switching one board each time so the boards in the middle of floor. Let's say: if you're recovering the six at a time they eat those words might get six passes exactly. But when you get to the edge of the wall that last one is only getting.

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But still the one pass is sufficient. It's just and then you flip around on the edges. Sorry I need to describe this better. On the edges say we were doing the edge of this room and it were a straight line. It didn't have these little coves in it. The belt itself is going to be on the right side of the machine and there's housing over here against this wall. So that means you're going to have four boards that aren't being sanded.

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So I'm going to walk down this entire length of the wall, down I'm, going to come the entire length back, but I'm only going to do a room like this I'd split up into three sections, so I start over there I go to where maybe the chairs start I do against the wall. There then I'd come back I do from this Cove to this wall, to the edge of the wall and then I come back. I do from here to this corner right there.

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So that way, you're going over it more than once and then you flip around and you do the edge this way and this way so you're hitting both sides of the machine, can't believe I. That's very good questions, very good questions.

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Alright, so you're done with sandy, let's move on to every homeowners, worst nightmare, selecting a finish! What do you want? Do you want Staind? Look at all these stains? Do you want an oil rub, finish would take takes years but turns out great. Do you want oil poly water-based poly, which is more environmentally friendly? Do you want soy-based poly, which is very environmentally friendly? Do you want to match the trim?

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What do you want to do- and this is my favorite part, because homeowners squirm and it seems like nobody ever decides until the day we're supposed to do it? So that's the biggest. That's the biggest problem and I have some examples up here that I I guess I could just walk through them now and you can come see them after mostly just the stain cards which you can look at what I mean you have boards like this tiger wood, which would be a darker stain.

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You have Hickory a darker oak, a lighter oak, whether you want that oak floor to be glossy or sad, and it all depends like with walls a satin floor or satin wall is going to show less marks or where than a high gloss finish or a glossy wall. You're going to see the fingerprints on a glossy wall, you're going to see every fingerprint scuff water moisture mark on a glossy floor, so we use satin poly, probably ninety percent of our coats. We also use poly itself.

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Ninety percent of the time that we finish a floor which I'll get into on the next slide, and my advice is to stick to the character their home and keep it classic classic would be a polyurethane finish like I, said ninety-nine percent of our work. It was just 19 ounce 99 for the first coat. We use either a dry fast sealer, which is a poly, it's just a little bit more expensive and it seals the wood very quickly within five hours, and you could code again after that.

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You can use the dry fast dealer, which is more expensive or a thinner poly, so get some polyurethane and thin it out with some mineral spirits. For your first coat, you want something that's going to so deep into the floor. So, instead of using a Polly, that's going to sit on top it's more gelatinous. You want something! That's going to penetrate one thing you can do to get a stain or a poly to penetrate as well.

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It's called popping the finish and what that is, is you're, applying water over the entire floor to pop the grain of the wood, just like opening up the pores on your face and then that'll, let the poly or the dry fast sealer get into those pores and penetrate deeper in the floor, giving you a longer finish or a deeper finish in a better color popular finish.

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It's kind of tough to do for your first time, it's good to practice, maybe in a spot, but you have to be really careful that you don't put too much water in one spot, that you don't let it soak in you're just applying to the top and then wiping it off right away. You're, not letting water sit on the floor.

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If you do that, then you're going to have water spots, what you're trying to stand out anyways by saying in your floor the application, what we use we used to use a t-bar when I first started in a t-bar, is made by Bona, which is a for company. They sell Sanders, they sell finish, they sell everything and a t-bar is just a bar. It's a tea! So you have your pole! Then it connects to a flat bar.

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You have a lamb's wool or a fibrous fabric on the end of, and then you just bar out Polly, so you're pushing Polly over the floor the entire time it's kind of what they use on gym floors because they're large areas they pour down a bunch of poly and they work it back and forth. What we've used for four years since my first year and was the rave new technique, was the super expensive roller, a paint roller, and now we've been using that forever. Everybody swears by the paint roller.

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It's the easiest way to do it. You get less bubbles in your finnish air bubbles, yeah it's easy and it's cheap. So we use a simple 97 sent brush for the edges in the corner and a two dollar roller. One thing with the roller: you try to buy a more expensive roller, because then it won't have as many fibers in it.

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We also run the rollers down with our bare hands, like you would, if you're painting your own house to get those fibers outs and they're not going to end up on your wall or your floor. So with the roller and brush slow and steady, it's going to self level a little bit you're going to apply it with the grain as well.

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Like you see, and you don't want to go too fast because that's going to create air bubbles in your floor, the first coat the second coat I'll get into this later, doesn't matter at all, slop it on because you're buffing in between those coats before your final coat I'll, give an example of this room say: I, we're coating it by myself. I'd want to first find out where my exit is so I, don't poly into this corner, and then I have to walk over the entire floor. So I'd start in this corner.

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I would go with a brush and do the entire edge up to about here and then I drop my brush right. There I pick up my watering can or whatever you're, using to apply the poly, pour it down brush the entire distance I. Get to this mark I, then brush the edge. All the way back to say here again run down. You always want to keep a wet edge.

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A wet edge is very important in poly, because if it's not a wet edge, what you're going to do when you go over it with that roller that brush is that brush is going to dig down and leave the lines in the poly, which is a very soft, wet substance, so an important where mass to avoid getting high and college it and really wear a mask, but now idea that's.

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Joke the prep work.

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Preparation for coating, the floors dust cloth mop the surface surface, to remove fine particles. That's just like a microfiber cloth using your car to take whacks off after you've waxed it, and we use a really really expensive vacuum that is very powerful, but a shop vac works too. We also have a felt padded wand, so the bottom of the wand itself has a felt pad, which picks up a lot of those fibers and what you want to do when you're vacuuming as well. You want to start the same way.

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You would coating in the corner and work your way out vacuum all the corners. First, all the edges. First and then you go and you draw the end of your vacuum. Up so you're away edge is touching the floor and your leading edge is tipped up to let the particles slide underneath as you pull, and then you pick up anything else, the dust whatever with the cloth mop and you don't necessarily have to- but some people also liked to dust the entire house, but you're also saying between coats.

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So it's not important to dust until you're. Putting on your final coat all right, so you just poly the floor or you stayin the floor and then Paul it it. Whatever you did to the floor, whatever your labors decision was now you're, going to buff the entire surface, with a hundred grit buffer and you're, going to orb the corners. So just like this, this is a pauly d floor that we did afterwards. You take the buffer with 100 grit pad you run it over the floor.

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You can go any direction with that as well, but it's nice to stick with the grain. Sometimes it'll leave scratches but you're not trying to scratch the floor. You're trying to scratch the first layer of poly or the first layer of sealer you're trying to take off those pieces of dirt or those pair particles or whatever it's there. That's what you're trying to get with this buff and then Paul the edge and corners and then thank you.

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Vacuum and cloth mount the entire floor so now you're ready for your second coat of poly, don't slop it on like the first as much, but you can still give it a liberal Co. It's not going to soak up as much it's going to go a lot faster, but again you want to make sure it's even you want to make sure its debris free and that's a roller method right. There he's doing it incorrectly because he has barefoot bare feet. That's another thing: I and my boss don't tend to wear shoes.

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When we're coating the floor, you don't want to have any oil touch the wood, so you don't know. What's going to be on the bottom of your shoes, we just go in our socks because then there's a barrier between the oil with our feet or the moisture and the floor, and we don't go with shoes because, like I said, you could have stepped in gum on the way in or whatever you might have stepped in. We also use booties sometimes, but socks are the new rage.

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Thank you. Thank you. So.

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After the second coat, what do you do again? You're going to buffing over the corners you're, going to use the same hundred grit you're, going to run running over the entire floor in orb the corners and like before you're, taking out all the hairs and pieces of dirt or any imperfection? In the finish that you just laid down mind you, each coat of poly has 24 hours to dry before you real reapply different finishes will take different times.

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Just depends on really what you want and actually most males don't but read the directions on the back of the can because they're correct so.

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So now after you vacuumed again, you dusted again I personally, like to dust the entire place. All windowsills tops of fan, blades door frames before you put on the final coat and then you're, giving to vacuums you're going really slow with your vacuum and you're coming back after you cloth mop the floor just to make sure that's nothing nothing's in it and then hopefully, you'll get a glossy finish like that, and you really really really want to take your time with this final coat. Getting down in your hands and knees.

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I'll do edges and my boss will do the large area when we're putting on poly I'll, do an edge up an edge up or poor a line for him and then I'll literally get down on my hands and knees and crawl along the entire floor on my knuckles, because you don't want to put your palms on the floor, excessive oil and just get down, and you look for every imperfection, a Miss spot, a hair because that's going to show in the final, if you have a Miss spot in the first and second coats, it's all right because you're doing another coat for the final and it's there for life.

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So that's the final product. This is the house. We just did two weeks ago: refinish, that's your inch and a quarter inch and a half oak and that's just a standard poly. That's what most most houses do.

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This would be the satin yeah. It does look pretty glossy, though, with the light. This is a high-gloss. You know still a little wet too I. Think.

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And use are some photos, I got offline and then now it's question time. This is off my bosses website, prime hardwood floors, calm and I have business cards up here, but any other questions as well as examples of flooring up here. If anybody wants to talk about engineered or prefinished or whatever.

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Tak rigs uh yeah, it's the same as a microfiber cloth there they work yeah. Definitely wish they'd pick up a lot more, but I think the old school that guys use the tags.

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Really, you can't tell a hundred percent until you sand that first time with water stains, if you see a water stain the darker, it is the more likely it's not going to come out. The lighter it is the more likely it'll come out. It depends. It really just depends if you yourself want to in that spot, take a piece of sandpaper and rub. You can really find out there too, if you don't want to, if you know whether I want to refinish all the floors or not but yeah, it's situational.

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You can don't buy your standard filler, go to a hardwood floor and supply company and buy a filler whether it's matters. If it's red elk white oak, you really want to find the type of wood you have, which could be tough for some people. It's a guessing game. A red oak is going to be more pink or white. Oak is going to be more white, and then you buy that correct, filler you're going to travel it on. If you want, if you have cracks everywhere, I get it in my house.

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If you just have small cracks, you can use a putty knife and you put it in and then you do that before you before your third coat. So you want to sand that off after its dried and then you buff, on top of it and then you're ready to go.

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Nope, after the second sanding or even the third sand, it depends on how much, if you're going to trial finish the entire thing it hardens pretty hard, so you're going to want to put it on after the second sanding, with the belt sander before your 80 grit, because the trowel it's going to get into the cracks. But it's also going to leave the thin film over the entire floor.

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We're we're a petition, but your whole house I mean floor, hardwood laminate, hard maple. If you do the halls.

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Or is their separation in levels between yo, so there's no barrier in between the kitchen? Then it gets tough. If you have say you have one bad bedroom and it lines up the carpet, you could refinish or you could buff and coat that room. You can buff encode a situation like yours. Like say this is the kitchen: that's the living area, that's completely fine, but the kitchen is super scuffed.

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You can do it, but you're still going to see a visible line where it enters the rest of the house and in your case with the prefinished. It's going to show a lot, because the pre finish is a baked on finish vs paul ii, which is a rolled on drying in the open air. Finish.

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I have never used I've, never seen my boss I there. If there are water stains, what we do we rip it out and we lace in lacing. In is say we had an area like this. It has a water stain. We on this board, that's black after we cut it out. We'd go back to here then the next board. We go back to hear next board up to here and we'd, stagger at the entire way and I'd say ninety nine percent of the lasons that we do to replace a bad spot.

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You can't ever tell that we were there. There was a stain there. So that's a really it's labor intensive, but it's worth it. If you have a big large water stain, the guy had one right in front of my kitchen right in front of my sink and I didn't want to put it rug there. So we ripped it out and looks a lot better. Now and I was able to match with 85 year old wood.

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We don't we if we're going to stain, we stain and then we poly, but there are tinted Polly's that you can get and like minwax as a poly shades that you can use. So what stuff? With that I, don't know if you've ever used it, but if you're using a tinted poly, you really have to make sure that your strokes, whether it be your brush, strokes or your roller strokes, are even inconsistent, make sure you're not pressing down too hard, because the color is within the thickness of the poly.

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So if you pull and drag a spot, you're gonna have say a red mahogany swatch here and then a lightly red mahogany swatch, where you screwed up yeah. Definitely.

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Do to evaluated before his game.

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Usually in older homes, you pop a corner of the shoe and bass and, like I said, if there's a slope up cuz a lot of most people only pop off the shoe they never pop off the baseboards.

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If there's a slope up, you'll see that once if it's a deep slope, you'll see that it's twice or you can go to a closet where there will usually be the edge of a board in a closet, there'll be a gap in between that edge of the board in the wall, and you can look down a few where the tongue or the groove is to see how much thickness you have left.

C

For three quarter inch boards like this depending on wear and tear. If you have light, wear and tear six times, if you have kids and dogs I'd, say three so three to six, depending on where.

F

C

Why it's such a great product and a good investment, because it's for me hardwood, is not laminate or prefinished, but hardwood is a great investment because it can last like I, said my house is how old and sure you people here have old houses so same floor inside.

F

Okay time for the sword, boy I get my.

D

C

It really depends if you get a company I, don't want to talk about. No, it's it averages. I'd say between 250 for your back door van toting craigslist ad floor installers to 450.

C

My boss is right around three, so you can talk to me. After about my company.

D

I feel that one time is that they.

F

Would say installment.

F

C

That's all which city you're talking about depends on which city in within the city. We do mostly, we do ninety percent refinish, but we work for a lot of contractors as well. So last week we did two thousand square feet of four inch walnut. It just depends really, but mostly we do refinishing.

E

Protect against them just kind of curious. Your.

C

Eye yep, you're running, say: you're running the belt sander that last picture I had was right up against carpet so this carpet, you see how there's this trim board that runs against their perpendicular. I should say that trim board a lot of houses. Don't have that, but that's a great board to have, because you know exactly where to stop again with the big machine.

C

It's got one wheel and back two wheels in front if I'm coming back right here, I'm still I haven't sanded this much of the floor, because I can't let that back wheel drop, because if I do you're going to go to the floor so on a floor like this or where you have a tile or carpet you're, gonna or ball this with the palm orb and hands handscraped prefers then orb afterwards and then even just take a piece of sandpaper on your fingers and run really close, especially if you have two different boards like this corner, where the grain runs.

C

This way, the grain runs that way, you're doing that with hand scrapers and then a piece of sandpaper on your hand and then the buffer can go over at all yeah.

B

um Do you recommend that is there a product, it's better for the finish product, absolutely.

C

I'm, not a rep for bona, but Bona traffic.

C

It's a hundred dollars a gallon, so it's expensive, but this is what they use in all commercial spaces, where every single, if we have a person that really cares about the floor and they want to protect and they have a dog they're going to use bone a traffic every single time or if you have a bunch of young kids and it's in a kitchen, Bona traffic is recommended. You're just going to have you're, not gonna, have to refinish it as much it's a water-based sealer.

C

So with that being said, you have to stand down to the bottom. You have to re-sand the entire floor. If you want to refinish it, you can't do a buffin coat with a water-based poly. You probably write that down. If you want that's why oil-based poly is best and that's why I like it the most because say five years down the road that dog and those kids have torn up the kitchen, you can do a buffing coat and take out ninety percent of the scratches.

C

You could not do that with this, but buona traffic is the way to go. I have a dog and I've only just used normal pauline, my house, but that's because I have free access to equipment. The secretary finish it whenever I would non.

G

Professional advice about not using belt sander instead, my machine, that's got three pit. Ignore history: yes yeah, he said you almost can't. You know gouge the floor. Oh you can't at all pay attention. Nope. Is that a safer piece of rental equipment than using.

C

Big dolphin, oh for sure, absolutely yeah or there's also square buffs, which are large like the square buff for the palm that you hit the corners with there's large square buffs that you buy just a sheet of sandpaper and you set it on its going to take a lot more time. You imagine something like a belt sander, that's rotating versus a vibrating palm orb or a spinning 3ds machine.

C

It's going to take a lot more time and the only bad thing about that 3ds machine which we have one who we've used is like I, said the pig tails, so you're not going to see them from this level or if you have a lot of natural light, you're going to see most of your scratches in the sanding. If you have a room with no windows or one window and a ceiling fan light, you can use whatever you want, because you're not going to see any of the scratches.

C

But the 3ds leaves a lot of little pigtails everywhere.

F

This may fall outside of the true partner.

E

Question, but can you comment on refreshing, a par case where floor it's just become dull in places and.

C

Buff and coat you take the buffer rubbing.

D

Take much depends.

C

On how it was a traditional park, hey are you talking party like this, where it's probably three and a quarter inch boards you can take just as much off this? Is you could a normal flora normal floor just runs like that? That's all it's just a different sanding method, because it is parking you have varying grains you're going to spend a lot more time.

C

Sanding it, but a buffing coat would be the best option if you just have minimal scratches in it, and all that is, is using the large buffer with 100 grit running it over Paul mean the corners and then putting coats of poly. On top of that.

C

Screen or both you can use screens we use screens, we also use sandpaper, so it just depends screens are more expensive, but they let the debris through into the felt bad. That's on the bottom versus the sand paper, which just pushes it out so and the good thing about screens is it lets it into that felt and then the vacuum that's on top can suck it out more, but sand paper works just as well.

G

And if friends on be that Polly heal over time and question mothers that product we're out for.

C

Product poor application- both it could be both they.

G

Make sure you mean much something to yeah.

C

We've never I've never used minwax I've, never use anything that you could buy and home depot go to a hardwood floor in supply company Musa, lon, Musa, fours and Florence Northwest off 694 in the north metro, I'm trying to think what's done here, I'm, not sure my boss is from Plymouth floors, northwest and lon moose off it's a pretty funny. Guy he's got a website as well yeah.

C

Yeah but the sanding is where all the money comes in because I mean that's the hard work right, uh I mean I, don't I, don't you know my boss and say that.

C

Yeah he's pretty open to anything, but that's is where all the money and all the hard work is like. Like I said it's just slopping it on plus I. Think if you go that far, you might just want to have us, do it anyways.

C

This is me yes,.

C

You can go to bonobos Bona also sells microfiber cloth pads on a wand on a t-bar. That's what I use in my house I just bone it with the microfiber cloth, which you can Swiffer sells. Those two I think: don't don't don't don't don't mop wood floors, don't mop wood floors. Never what I use is what is it called I just wash my floors the other day it's Murphy's Oil, Murphy soil, get down on your hands and knees and scrub it in and wash it and all I yep.

C

It's a third of a cup to a gallon, I, think or fourth, even and all I do is I wipe over it and then immediately right after I do one wipe or, however bad the stain? Is you take a dry towel and you wipe after that and I? Do that probably like four times a year, so I also live with three other men, but uh yeah just use a microfiber cloth to get the hair and dust tell people to take off their shoes. This is Minnesota yeah. What.

D

Are you doing up sweetie.

C

There's products well depends if the floor below them is exposed before blows exposed. You can drill through just make sure your screws not three inches, and it goes through the bottom of the flow or the top of the floor. There's also kits that you can get that you could screw through the floor and then use plugs, but obviously you're going to see the plugs.

C

If we were refinishing a floor, what we might do in once box we're standing down anyways is we might pop one board where it's bad and or we might pop one board where it's bad and then nail in that row and take an epoxy which you can drill a sixteenth inch hole down in the floorboards squirt, this epoxy in which is like a window or door foam which is spraying into expands. It expands in that entire loose area where it's obviously squeaking, but then you get into more money.

C

It's not that expensive, though, we've only used it probably five times people just some people can handle the squeaks and some people can't, but the epoxy is what I do because then you're not going to have any visible evidence of it, except for that sixteenth inch, hole that will get filled with Paul, anyways and blend in yeah.

C

I'd probably only say two jobs in five years that I've helped them with.

C

Depends on how bad they screwed it up, whether they're add your digs or belt sander digs in the floor, so yeah not too many not to me, but I know a lot of people. I mean you can easily do it yourself. You just make sure you read up on it or download this PowerPoint.

B

C

Corporate presentation.

B

Will be on the city website as a webcast.

G

C

He's just someone a mix-up grits, you don't to do the 60 grit and indeed the 24 grit, because then you're gonna have to go back into the 40 and 60 yeah. You can I just do it, how we switch off either I edge and he does the belt sander. If he's tired and if he's not tired, Hildy the edge. But you can do what we do at the same time. So just make sure you vacuum and make sure you switch grits.

G

C

Like the scratches at your feet, if these scratches that your feet are dark like this, that means that they're, underneath the finish if they're lighter scratches or you get down and you're watching the light. And you can see right below you that a lot of these are just surface indentations. That can be buff buffed out. But if it's the darker deeper black like these, then you're gonna have to sand down because that's hitting the real wood- and that would now is absorbing the dirt and moisture when it gets wet or dirty.

E

C

Yep, those black ones, these black ones, would still be there if we buffed.

G

C

Find out where you want to place your rug for the next five years and then buff underneath that and if it doesn't come home, leave their own there and you're set rugs are the key to success.

F

D

C

Yeah get a darker stain. Your your water spots are not going to show as much definitely yeah I could have when I. First, when Tom first told me to do this, I had a PowerPoint idea where I'd go through all wood and all types and everything and I realized that be 25 hours. If you get your laminates and prefinished, so I could talk about prefinished too. If people want or laminates.

C

Yeah I mean so laminate or engineered floor. Oh let's go over engineered because my opinion, nobody should be ever installing laminate engineered floor. All it is is apply what a cheaper would less expensive wood underneath a smaller thickness of real wood, the real wood being on top. So this is natural maple, it's the finish and the wood and then underneath is just cheap wood in general, as you can see from a piece of hickory, that's three-quarters inch down to the tongue. You can sand this a heck of a lot more than you can sand this.

C

That's why this is like less expensive.

C

So yeah! That's that's that if you don't have a lot of traffic in your space and you're tight on money, definitely go for the engineer floor. It's still great cuz you're getting hardwood and it just won't last as long. So it's not a sustainable. Being my other major I like to stick with that pre-finished flooring, which all three of these large pieces are up here. We have the Asian tiger, wood which is pretty sweet and then the hickory, and then this is I think this is I. Don't know what this is, but anyways prefinished floors.

C

It's like a normal piece of wood where you have the tongue and groove. The only thing is is when you snap these together and you hit a min and staple them. Just like you would a normal piece of hardwood before you sand it you're going to have the gap in between the boards and depends on how tight you get.

C

The boards depends on the manufacturing of the prefinished I, don't like it, because all I can see is dirt going in those cracks and getting down the thing with hardwood floors that are finished after they're installed is that you have one consistent level surface across the entire plane of the floor, so the dirt doesn't go in the cracks in between the boards. The dirt goes to the corner where you sweep it. The water doesn't go in between the boards. The water stays in one spot and you wipe it up.

C

So prefinished is a great idea for a do-it-yourself project, I'm, just really biased against them.

F

C

An engineered floor, you can get staple down options that are this. A floating floor will have a foam membrane on the back, which is also good in basements, if you're around concrete, but a floating floor itself isn't held together by anything but the connections, whereas an engineered floor is stapled down into a subfloor. A floating floor is held at the corners and it floats it moves back and forth. Okay still a good option.

C

With hardwood flooring, the space from the wall is depends on your baseboard, bigger the better because wood moves all the time, but we usually leave a eighth of an inch, a quarter of an inch, a floating floor. You want to leave less because it moves internally. It's not going to move as much side to side, but especially Minnesota floors, move a lot with change and humidity and temperature is.

G

There, every time we are new.

G

Floors versions: it's.

C

A stri time, somewhere it's going to dry, take longer to dry. In the winter it's going to drive faster.

B

G

And one day.

G

C

I think I had that on one of the sides, but I didn't talk about it. You always wanna. Oh.

G

C

G

C

Also want to turn off your HVAC unit, while it's being sanded, so that your return vents don't suck in all the dust. What we do we poly over the vent covers, even so that dust that we're shooting around doesn't go into the vent covers and then, when the system cycles on it would suck that in what else close, your windows turn off your fans and we try to tell them that 12 hours after every coat of poly don't walk on the floor.

C

You can't put rugs after on a finished floor after two weeks, because it takes a long time for it to finish finish drying. If you have a dog, don't have your dog on the floor for a week after, that's more just the safest way to do it, you can obviously have a dog on there the first day, just don't let it run around and scratch everywhere.

C

Yeah air movement is not ideal when you're finishing anything, whether it be a floor or furniture.

C

Yep, after about three hours, open the windows and let all there and you want- because it's pretty noxious otherwise.

G

C

A dual-chamber mask you could just wear the cheap white plastic masks to whatever affects you. If that's still affecting you with a two dollar mask, you can get the 15-dollar three I have a 3m to chamber, masks that I change the filter sound like every month, but it's just what affects you mine's super powerful, because I do it every day and I hate smelling my own breath in those white masks.

C

Well, thank everybody for coming. If you have any other questions or if you want to check out some stuff up here, I also have business cards for my boss feel free to take them. Free estimates can't say any more.

C