Floor refinishing, the big boy part 1

So, having admitted defeat with the orbital, we pulled on our big boy pants and went to get a big boy tool. We tried to do some research on different types and brands, but honestly, there isn't much out there. So, in the face of no information we decided to go with what we did know. There's a new Menards in town, and they rent drum sanders, and those drums sanders are pretty new, because the store is pretty new. So we decided we'd do that.

Turns out, the drum sander isn't so scary. One website we went to recommended you use the lightest grit you can find to practice. In our case this was 80 grit and this seemed like good advice, so that's what we did. When using the drum sander the MOST important thing is to ALWAYS keep it moving when it is running and touching the floor. Now the great thing is that most new machines come with a clutch that allows you to raise and lower the drum after you get it started. The trick is to start moving forward (or backward) before lowering the clutch. After the first few tries with the 80, we got the hang of it pretty well. So, we switched to 36 and started going for it.

We decided to start in the master bedroom

And we got as far in 30 minutes as we did in 7 hours with the orbital.

It sort of looks like Matt is doing a happy dance in the photo. I'm not sure if he was or not, but for the sake of the story, I'm going to say he was :).

Now, using the drum sander has a very specific formula. First of all, one pass is forward AND backwards. It's actually almost easier to walk backwards and pull it behind you. Also, you need to overlap passes, so that each bit of the floor gets actually 4 passes ( 1 forward and back, and then an overlap, forward and back). We actually put a piece of tape on the front of the drum and drew a line on it, so that we'd know where the center was. In addition to that, if your floor is very bad, like ours was, you will want to take at least one pass at a 7-25 degree angle to the floor boards. Because an angle cut is more aggressive than along the grain, this helps level the floor. If your floors aren't crazy bad, you might be able to get away with doing the diagonal at 60 grit, but with our cupped boards and old varnish, we weren't so lucky. But a diagonal at 36 did the trick (actually, in a few places, we had to do more than one diagonal pass at 36), but the point with 36 grit is to get all the varnish off. 

With the big boy, it only took a day for us to get all the varnish off, even with the extra diagonal passes. Also, pro tip here, if you do a diagonal pass with a grit, you must go over it with the grain with the same grit. A lot of people will skip this step, thinking the next grit will take out the cross grain scratches, but in general, it won't. And honestly, with the drum sander, it doesn't take that long ot do it right.