The day it clicked I was sanding my wood floors wrong for 10 years

I was refinishing my living room floor last month in Portland and a neighbor walked over to borrow my drum sander. He asked why I was going with the grain on an old oak floor that clearly needed cross-grain passes first. I'd been doing it the same way since 2014, watching the paper clog up every 5 minutes. He showed me his method in about 20 minutes and the difference was night and day. Has anyone else had a similar moment where a simple adjustment changed a whole process they thought they had down?

2 comments

2 Comments

anthony9898d ago

My buddy Mike spent YEARS stripping paint off old furniture with a heat gun going too slow. His neighbor showed him to move it like a speed boat not a tugboat, cut his time in half.

cole_mitchell88d ago

Wait wait wait, hold on. You're telling me you were running a drum sander on oak with the grain first? That's like trying to mow wet grass with the blades set too low, it just makes a mess. I've been refinishing floors since 2012 and I never even thought about cross-grain passes, I just figured you always follow the wood. My mind is blown, I've probably wasted hundreds of dollars on sandpaper over the years because I was doing it backwards.