Let me tell you, this process was excruciating. I did ninety percent of it with a hand sander, alternating between laying on my side and sitting on my behind. Plus I had to constantly move around the heavy tools you see in the photo above in order to work around them. I did put them on pieces of carpeting so I can easily slide them around though since they are so heavy.
I officially finished it up Wednesday at 4:50 p.m. (yes, I looked at the time because I was so excited and grateful it was all over) after working on it a little bit every day for over a week. Six hours was about the most I could do per day before I thought I would start crying. My arms, fingers, wrists, and back were all so sore every day and I have bruises on my forearms from propping myself up while I sanded.
One day I was complaining to mom about how terrible it was and she told me to just rent an orbital sander from Menards. I was about halfway done at that point but I thought at the very least if I rent it for an hour it should shave at least a day off my time. I looked it up online and saw that orbital sanders were smaller than belt sanders so I thought that could work out great. I felt like I should be able to handle that! So I rented one and got it back to the house when I realized I couldn't get it out of the back of my car. It was WAY too heavy for one person to lift up plus it had brushes on the bottom of it that would catch on the carpeting in the back of my Trailblazer and I couldn't get it out. I considered just driving back to Menards and saying, "It worked great!" but then luckily my step mom agreed to swing by and help me get it out so a big thanks goes to her for saving the day!
By that point over an hour and a half had passed on my rental time so I finally started sanding and after about a half hour a board in the floor caught the sanding discs underneath the sander and ripped all three of them to shreds so then I had to stop and go to the store and get more. About an hour later after I got back to the house my boyfriend showed up to help me load it up so I could take it back to Menards. After all was said and done I only used it about an hour and a half. It did save me about a day's worth of hand sanding, however, learn from my mistake...if you are a woman trying to rent one of these just make sure you have help loading and unloading it first.
Needless to say I finished the rest of it by hand. I have to go over it all one more time because I used a coarse sandpaper to get the previous polyurethane off and now I have to smooth it over with finer grit sandpaper, but that should go ten times faster. At least I hope! I also have about seventy five percent of the basement painted so I'm going to give myself a break from this wood flooring to finish the basement first before I sand again.
I'm getting there, slowly but surely! Here's what the living room and dining room looked like in the beginning in case you need a refresher:
I can't wait to see what it looks like once I stain it and seal it. I think only then will I truly feel like it was all worth it because right now I'm STILL sore from finishing it the sanding two days ago!
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