Refinishing Hard Wood Floors {Part 2}

 Hi y'all!  Can I just say that updating our floors has been a TIME consuming project... I have a confession, I am an overly optimistic person {which I am actually thankful for most of the time}.  After reading a bunch of blogs on how to redo wood floors, I thought this process would be a walk in the park.  Then life happened...  We went out of town, Tall Tan Man had two golf tournaments, and our move date got moved up 3 weeks!!  Needless to say, the process has taken longer than I expected, but I am totally in love with our finished floors.  I love them so much that I would do this whole process again, I think.  :)

Now I am going to fill y'all in on how we sanded the floors, and this weekend I will reveal the finished product!  Here are some of the before shots of the floor with the old golden polyurethane on it. 

He is such a hottie. :)  We started this project on Sunday evening of Labor Day weekend after flying in from Nashville {yes, we are crazy}. We went straight to Home Depot from the airport to rent the floor sander, and sanded until 1 AM...sorry neighbors.  We wanted to make sure we took full advantage of the 24 hour rental in order to stay on budget.

 
TTM did most of the sanding.  He started with 36 grit sandpaper, moved with the grain, and overlaped as he went {pictured above}.  He also worked very slow and steady.  This is why I wasn't allowed to touch the sander.  I don't do anything very slow... The floor sander does not get to all the edges which is one major downside. After the 36 grit paper, he sanded the whole house again with 60 and 100 grit.  We got the sander returned with 20 minutes to spare! Booyah!
 

 We first tried to use our palm sander to get all the edges, and that was pretty awful/ineffective.  So we decided to keep our sanity and rent an edge sander. 

This sander was CRAZY POWERFUL.  It will throw you across the room if you are not careful.  We {i helped!} moved  nice and slow try to get all the polyurethane up.  We used 36 and 100 grit paper.  Yep, we got lazy and skipped using the 60 grit...  In the end we did have to finish with a palm sander in order to get the corners of the closets and rooms. 

Here is our cost breakdown so far:

Paint Stripper {from step 1}: $9
Floor Sander Rental: $65
Floor Sander Paper + Palm Sander Paper: $130
Floor Edge Sander Rental: $43
Floor Edge Sander Paper: $20

Total: $267

Phew, that was long...and intense...and all about sanding...I think I'll just go to bed now!  I can't wait to share the finished product with you!

{LJ}