Wood Floor Sanding: For the Sake of Fine Flooring

It is the communion of sky with land that sets the backdrop for the world; in the same way, it is roof and walls along with floor together that depicts the background of interior schemes. From aesthetics to practicality, the role of flooring takes into consideration everything. This fact makes it one of the most important yet taken-for-granted aspects of any room. So, flooring should be seen as an investment and efforts should be invested in making it finely finished. Having said that, now the question is how it is to be done? Flooring professionals swear by dust-free floor sanding, making it a prerequisite for refinishing or recoating those existing floors or to-be-installed floors.

 

Customer Expectations

The first thing that guides a flooring professional in this regards is...customer expectations. So, whether the sander or finisher is working on a new home installation project or on a home remodelling job, he would do himself and the customers a favour by preparing floors properly for sanding and finishing processes. Sanding dust and finishing vapours are what are seen as some of the larger issues by home owners. To tackle the issues, many contractors start with preparing “customer prep” fact sheets, which announce what he/she should expect from the work. A typical fact sheet tells the customer: the duration of job, how he/she should prepare himself/herself from the adverse effects of parquet floor sanding, how important it is for him/her to restrict traffic from entering the work-in-progress area and what all he/she should remove from floor and area before the job gets started. 

 

Preparation & Inspection

Before sanding a new floor or an existing one, the floor is prepared for thorough inspection by clearing it entirely. And before the job is taken up, the floor is painstakingly fastened to the substrate. And as far as protruding nails are concerned, they are countersunk. Dust is seen as the reality of life by the flooring professional. Even when professional floor sanding is underway, efforts are put not to eliminate it, but to minimize it. Sanders prefer to seal off the area with plastic. From light fixtures to wall coverings, everything needs to be sealed off. And room climate and composition of the subfloor need to be checked.

 

Safety measures

Observing safety measures is but an inevitable part of wood floor sanding process. Spontaneous ignition, which can happen with sanding dust, entails observation of safety measures. When an old floor is being sanded, the frequency of combustion is more than other cases. The spontaneous occurrence of combustion can be controlled if sanding is done safely. For the matter, the professionals keep an eye on the dust-collection bags that are fitted with equipment. They empty the bags from time to time, that too in a proper container. Besides, before leaving the site or transporting the machine, they make sure to empty the bag. And removal of dust receptacles from the site should be done on a day-to-day basis. Apart from handling the sanding dust, use of machinery in a proper way is considered as following another set of on-job safety measures.

 

Sanding Equipment

The basic sanding tools are drum or belt floor sander, a hand scraper, a buffer, an edge sander, a sanding block and different types of sandpaper, vacuum cleaner, broom and screen discs – from grit and coarse to fine. Drum and belt sanders remove old stain or finish; buffers abrade; oscillating machines provide random abrasion pattern; triplanetary sander is meant for fine finish sanding, and so on.

 

Wood floor can be everything - from artistic to practical. It is considered for an ideal room climate and long life. And to have a wooden floor installed or remodelled, the stage of sanding needs to be dealt with. Professionals, such as Acorn Floor Sanding, make the sanding job more hassle-free, more time-saving and easier. Hire them if you are looking for such professionals in the UK!