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REFINISHING WOOD FLOORS Refinishing floor with exposed nails Our new house in Malden has hardwood floors that are in pretty bad shape. They need to be sanded down and refinished. In some of the rooms, that's not a problem, but in the living room and dining room the boards have exposed finshing nails. The nails are completely flush with the boards, as nearly as I can tell (the floors haven't been maintained well, but the parquet was originally *very* nicely done). My question is this: Can I go ahead and rent a sander and sand those floors without worrying too much about the exposed nail heads, or do I need to use some completely different technique to avoid damaging either the sander or the nails and boards? --J. Why are the nails there? Are they the nails that hold the boards down? Are there many, many of them, and are they in at a 45 degree angle? If so, then your boards have already been sanded beyond hope -- the tongue and groove is now a rabbet. You're looking at replacing them. Are there just a few of them, and are they put straight in? If so, just counter-sink them and do it. -russ Neither of the above; *each* board has a nail at each of the four corners (and the boards are short, not a significant fraction of the length of the floor - we're talking on the order of 10 or 20 little nails per square foot, if I remember correctly), and the nails are straight in; the heads are quite flat (and about 2mm across). Given that the floorboards are completely flat and join perfectly, I'm guessing that they aren't being held in exclusively by these nails, so I'd say the nails were probably intended to be decorative. Yes, that sure sounds like a lot of labour to me. :-) (OTOH, none of the nails has come up at all in the 119 years of the house's existence, as far as I can tell, so maybe they're more strongly fastened than I'd imagine and they *are* holding the boards down.) Thanks! -j. This is outside my realm of experience. The boards in our old house were only 3/8" thick, and had already been sanded within an 1/8 inch of their lives. The grooves were broken off a number of them and the nails were showing. Sounds like your floors are in better condition. When we took up the floorboards in the kitchen, we found McCarthy-era newspapers used as a floor leveller. By the way (totally apropos of nothing), vinyl flooring is like paint -- it hides *nothing*. Any imperfection will eventually be visible through the floor. Also, the edges of the boards will show through unless you use T&G plywood. I didn't know such a thing existed. > Given that the floorboards are completely flat and join
perfectly, I'm I'd seek professional advice on this one. I've never seen a floor like this. -russ Re: the floors with nails: my floor finishers sanded and finished a dime that was jammed under one of my doorsills. So I don't think the rented sander will balk at your nails, although their tops may end up shiny. --Lauren When I rented a sander the guy at the rental place really drilled it into me that you have to be very careful to countersink all of the nails first. For one thing, the nail heads would shred the sandpaper (and that stuff is pretty expensive). Also, he claimed that the sparks created when the sander hits the nail can get sucked up by the vacuum into the bag of sawdust. Fine sawdust and sparks are a very bad combination. He claimed to know of at least two houses that had burned down because of this. While I was actually sanding the floors, I did hit quite a many nail heads (it is hard to see them when they are stained the same color as the wood, but after you hit them once, they are easy to spot :-). It only shredded the sandpaper a couple of times. As far as sparks, I didn't end up with any fires.... I was paranoid enough about it, though to keep the bags of sawdust outside away from the house overnight. --scott (jss) A couple of clarifications: the floors *themselves* are in pretty good shape. What's in really bad shape is the finish. And the nails are not the set-at-45-degrees-into-the-tongue kind; they go right into the middle of the boards at a 90-degree angle. I think they're supposed to be decorative as well as structural. There are probably something on the order of 20-30 per square foot. Yes, that's a lot of nails. :-) I'd really like to do this myself if it can be done safely, but Scott wrote: > When I rented a sander the guy at the rental place really
drilled it into So I want to know whether I can do this safely. One more piece of data is that in most of the rooms at least, it looks like it's already been done: either the nails are hidden under sunken holes full of polyurethane, or they're hidden under caps of sawdust. I'm perfectly willing to spend a couple days with friends countersinking the nails, but with that many nails, I'd worry that one or two might get missed even if we're very careful. Does anybody have any advice for how to go about getting professional advice about this that's actually useful (and not just `Of course people can't do their own floors! Ya gotta hire a professional!' If in fact it's too dangerous to do these floors, I'd like to know that, but I'd also like to know it wasn't the professional's self-interest speaking. :-) I'd be happy to pay somebody something (maybe a hundred bucks or so?) to come out and take a look at the floors, and give me an honest, realistic assesment of how safe it was and some advice about how to go about doing it. Anybody know a flooring contractor they think would be willing to do that? Or am I being way to paranoid? Thanks, -j. On the other hand, the guys who sanded and poly-ed the floor in my office went right over nailheads with no problem. I now have a few rectangular bits of metal on my floor...Shiny, smooth, flush with the floor and covered with two coats of polyurathane. The house is held together with those old-fashioned big square nails. Kinda cool. :Andy >So I want to know whether I can do this safely. One more
piece of Very little will happen if you miss a few nails. If you are willing to spend a few hours or a day countersinking the nails, then don't worry over much about missing a few. When I sanded my floors, I tried to countersink them all, but many of the nail heads were exactly the same color as the floor, and I missed quite a few. Of course, after you go over them once with the sander, they will be very easy to spot. The most important thing is to get all of the nails that actually stick up, they can shred the sandpaper. The ones that are flush will create sparks the first time you go over them, and then you can countersink them. I was the one who wrote about the sawdust getting sparks and going boom. I don't have any data on what the odds are of getting hurt by this, but I do know that when I did my own floors there were certainly a handful of nails in each room that I missed and that created sparks. I'd be very surprised if professionals use some method of finding every single nail to ensure that none were sticking up. Of course, I suppose that you could try to do something with a magnet to find them. In short, having refinished my own floors, I'd say don't worry about it. Countersink all the nails you can. After the first round of sanding get the nails you missed the first time. Put that bag of sawdust outside when you are done. I'd also recommend that you don't sand the floors yourself if you have any back problems. I don't have any back problems, but the drum sander was very stressful on the lower back. -scott (jss) Gack! I have sanded floors after countersinking nails, probably not perfectly either. Nobody warned me about such a thing and nothing caught fire. Sounds alarmist. (My sander also didn't have a vacuum bag- we had to vacuum separately. That meant screening off the room and vacuuming frequently, but MAY have been safer, who knows.) The only caveat was nails will rip your expensive 3M sandpaper circle, and could scratch up the sander, so countersink. It really shouldn't be that hard to go over it methodically countersinking, then run a flashlight beam across it at an angle to check for ones you missed. Just tedious. Then before finishing be sure to vacuum REALLY well AND go over it with tack cloth, to avoid getting little greebles in the finish. Have a fire extinguisher on hand, but it really sounds like they're just trying to scare you.. --Liz >I was the one who wrote about the sawdust getting sparks
and going Ah, thats better. I thought it was some professional saying that. Yup, it aint rocket surgery. I'd say just go for it. (Oh, and dont forget you need a little had-held sander to get the corners- like one of those little vibrating square critters.) --Liz Back to top ON TO FLOORS 2 -"All About Mastic!"-> |
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