Can you sand parquet flooring

First, sand straight along the length of the floor, then sand across the width. The sander may leave marks across the floor or leave ridges, by sanding lengthways then across, any ridges will be sanded out.

There are three stages to floor sanding: rough, medium and fine. To achieve the best result, use grade grit sanding lengthways, followed by 50g across, lengthways at 80g, across at g and finally use g lengthways. There are no fixed rules on sanding. Some people use rough and medium sanding straight and across, then finish by fine sanding diagonally. If you are sanding yourself, find what works best for your floor. In tight spaces, you may not be able to change direction. The recommended way to do this is, after the lengthways run, to do the next one This does not have to be an exact angle; judging by the eye is good enough.

If you are sanding the floor yourself, you could sand it by hand, but this is a painfully slow and laborious process and it is difficult to sand evenly. Sanding attachments on drills will sand the floor, but this can also result in an uneven floor. It is best to use a professional floor sanding machine.

A parquet floor is expensive but will last a long time if sanded when worn. You want the floor to look nearly new when sanded, and not uneven. This is why you need to use the best equipment. Good floor sanders cost a lot but can be hired at reasonable rates.

The typical conventional drum sander that is available from most hire shops is not going to give you the best chance to sand your floor well. We avoid overscreening, which also causes dishout.

We mixed a stain to match the homeowner's adjoining floors. It would be inefficient to apply stain square by square with the grain, so by wiping on and wiping off in circles, we hit most of the squares with the grain. While we're on our knees, we check for any sanding imperfections and undesirable scratches that we can take out with hand-sanding or scraping.

We use a cut-in pad and then a T-bar to coat the floor with an oil-based urethane. We apply in the longest direction of the room, which is the focal point. This coating will level itself out and won't show finish streaks against the grain. It would be impractical to coat each square individually to go with the grain. After letting the finish dry per the manufacturer's instructions, we screen with grit and then handsand around the edges of the room and corners.

For the hand-sanding, we go in the same direction of the grain of each square of parquet. We then hand-scrape out any finish imperfections. Finally, we buff with a maroon pad. Use different grades of buffing paper to get rid of any ridges or clear marks where your sander has been directed across the floor.

Work your way through the highest grade of paper to the lowest, to achieve an end result as close to perfect as possible. Once your parquet wood is sanded, buffed and there are no lines left where your equipment has been, you can apply a polish. At this point, give your wood a thorough clean to get rid of any settled dust. First, use a brush and follow-up with a hoover to make sure there is no dust on the surface of your floor before sealing it.

The type and colour of the polish you use will depend on your personal interior tastes and the design of your home, whether you prefer a more natural-looking wood or a deep and darker shade to make a bold statement. Oil, in particular, requires two coats of both a primer and finishing oil, with a period of 12 hours needed between each layer, as well as brushes, pads, cloths and other protective equipment being required.

Be prepared for the two-day process of sealing your floor yourself, if you want to achieve a professional finish. While it may be tempting to sand a wood floor yourself to save costs, the preparation, wide range of equipment and days that are needed to get it right makes it a huge task to commit to. This is especially true of people using hire tools as they tend to leave chatter marks across the floor and even cut in on one side leaving a ridge in the wood.

So your process should be straight on 36grit, across on 50g, straight on 80g, across on g and finally straight on g. There are occasions when the rules need to be broken.

Sometimes it is not possible to change the direction by 90 degrees, purely because of space restraints. For example, when sanding parquet in a narrow hallway, you must find another way. There are many different solutions and infact you can tailor your floor sanding method to any floor depending on the wood, pattern, size, damage and time restraint.

A good general idea is to just do the alternate sanding Its not perfect because sanding at that angle will be more less aggressive on the blocks that are almost with the direction of the sanding and more aggressive on the blocks that are almost totally across the direction of the sanding.