Hardwood Floors April/May 2025

AT THE SITE How Many Times Can a Wood Floor be Sanded? (Continued)

Generally speaking, most solid wood floors can be sanded six to eight times during their overall service-life. However, the amount of material that will be removed and the number of times a floor can be sanded depends on several factors, including the type of wood, the thickness of the wear layer, the skill of the contractor, the flatness of the floor, and the equipment used to sand the floor.

HOW MANY TIMES?

REMOVING EXISTING FINISHES The other component of evaluating a floor for a resand is assessing the finish that is on the floor. For any resand, your first rough sanding is always going to focus on removing the existing finishes, and flattening the floor. The type of finish, number of coats, and colors you need to remove will dictate how aggressive you need to be on your initial cuts. The first cut normally is done with an abrasive that is coarse enough to cut through the finish, but not so coarse that it requires additional sanding just to remove the scratches they’ve left behind. Some of the high-abrasion finishes, like aluminum oxide, may respond best to fine-grit ceramic abrasives, in order to break the surface tension. This sanding process involves first cutting the floor with the fine grit abrasive, then going back with coarser abrasives on the belt sander to get to raw wood. Today’s sanding technology has made it easier to remove these old finishes, including factory finished floors, while preserving more of the wood beneath. Multi-disc sanders, buffers, and edgers with diamond abrasive attachments are capable of breaking through the existing finishes while minimizing the amount of wood removal from the floor surface. This process reduces the amount of time and the quantity of abrasives used to get to the raw wood. Regardless of the tool and the process used to remove the existing finishes from the floor, the other task that often is accomplished within this same rough sanding pass is the flattening of the floor.

100 hardwood floors hardwoodfloorsmag.com