| Hardwood Flooring by David Wisser
installs and finishes new wood floors, and repairs and refinishes
existing wood floors. A new installation can take from 1 to 5 days
(about 1 day for 300 square feet, an average-sized room). An
average refinish job (3 rooms or approximately 400 to 500 square
feet) usually takes 3 to 4 days to complete.
The basics
involved in a refinishing job are as follows:
The floor is
rough-sanded to remove the old finish, and a filler which
approximates the general color of the wood is toweled over the
entire surface of the floor.
In the case of top nailed or
surface-nailed floors, each nail is set by hand prior to the
application of filler, in order to ensure that each nail-hole will
accept filler.
Once the filler is dry, the floor is sanded again
with a finer sand paper to remove any excess filler and smooth out
rough-sanding marks.
Next, a very fine sand paper is used for the
final sanding pass, to remove any sanding marks left by previous
passes.
The floor is then screened, a process similar to sanding,
but using a milder abrasive screen instead of sand paper.
At this
stage, the floor is vacuumed, and the first coat of finish is
applied. The successive coats of finish are then applied, often
with an additional screening between coats.
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