Wood Floor Restoration Rant - warning long post

Approx a year ago my sister and I lost our Dad. Mom passed in 2004. He had been in an assisted living facility specializing in dementia for almost 2 years. I mention this only because I live out of State, (3 hours away), and as you can imagine there was work to do on the house. Well, somewhere during the painting and finished landscape clean-up I got this horrible, HORRIBLE!!! :crazy: idea. There is extensive wood floor throughout the house that is largely original parquet from the 50's. This is not the cheap stuff - solid almost 1/2" red oak. Anyway, it had never been touched except for my Mom using J&J wax and a buffer 1x a year for 20+ years. So, seeing potential for increased home value, I started researching re-doing wood floors. (Lots of utube out there...) Clean, sand with different grits, clean again, apply polyurethane. Not bad, messy but not that hard. Well, the not that hard part is true. I'm the daughter of a master woodworker, carpenter, builder with 7, yes 7 garages full of tools, machines, stuff to do almost any kind of building work. I had done many projects with my Dad when he was able and I learned a lot. So I ordered lots of sanding discs, rented a floor sander, bought 2 specialty sanders for edging and went to work, and work and.... well a year later I'm still at it. The rental on the floor sander got so expensive, I bought it. My beautiful paint job is totally covered in saw dust and the house literally will need to be washed down from ceiling to floor. (At least it's a ranch). I went through an extensive learning curve, lots of wasted sandpaper until I figured it out and now I'm about 60% done. (If you've gotten this far, I need to share the floor area I am writing about is almost 1800 sq ft, all open with extensive glass, so everything shows). I took a LOA from work to try to get this monster finished, and Bless this site for helping save my sanity. I'm in my 50's and crawling all over hard floor on a slab is taking it's revenge on my body for my stupidity for taking this on. I can go for 30 minutes and then I have to get up. I'm basically to the point where I am almost done with the floor sander and now doing the edges and areas of poly that the floor sander couldn't get to. Then I have to apply a specialty filler to fill cracks and level out. That at least I can use the floor sander to do. Then clean from ceiling to floor and apply poly. Meanwhile, all of the weeds I spent $$$ to have cleared, pool opening, closing, opening again.... Anyway, my blessing is having found a new passion in soap and during my breaks I watch videos and read. Depending on how long this takes, I will probably have read every post here. Sorry for the run-on sentences, it's my specialty. Anyway, past my break time, back to it...

Bless your heart! I'm so sorry for your loss.
My mom passed last year, and I also got the crazy idea to start major revamping projects to the house. Floors, walls, dry walling, painting, you name it! I live 13 hours' drive from there, so the plan is to take another few weeks off this summer to go finish what I started.
Be careful, be good to your body - we only get one! Rant away, that's part of what we are all here for.

That's a job I'm not brave enough to tackle. Pulling up the carpet in our old house and then spending way too much time pulling up the stupid tacking strips was more than enough for me. I really admire you for doing all that work yourself!

Bless your heart! We bought a 1940 house with wood floors in living, dining and both bedrooms. DH talked about refinishing but I prefer the grubby look. Now after reading your post, I'm sure of it. (Ours really aren't that bad and aren't as visible as yours, either.) Thankful for the progress you have made!

Thanks ladies for your support. This is a contemporary home with woodworking everywhere, esp beautiful cathedral ceiling in the living room. So the floor really looked bad empty after the new paint. My husband swore to me he would not help me with this project at all.... (He's smarter than I am), but he has agreed to help me clean in prep for the polyurethane:clap: I'll see if he can post some pictures for me - Haven't learned to do it yet - too much sawdust in my brain.... in my hair.... Wondering if beneficial as an exfoliate other than sandpaper? I should be able to scrub at least 20 years off

I feel for you. I redid the floors of an old house I bought. I had no idea that they had very old wax on them that would melt as I sanded and completely gum up the very expensive sanding belts in about, oh, 30-60 seconds. Then I would have to stop and the wax would harden and I would beat it out of the belts because heck if I was buying a new sanding belt every foot or so. I ended up using the edger for almost the entire floor, which left a swishy pattern all over. I didn't care after a while. I did the first floor before I broke and hired someone to do the second floor. It warmed my heart to stand on the first floor and listen to them shouting and cussing their heads off when they started, because they were having the same problem I had. The lead guy finally came downstairs swearing a blue streak about it. When I told him I had done the first floor myself, he offered to hire me on the spot. They sure regretted taking that job.

I did do it again in a different house- no wax on the floor though. Not being a really detail-oriented person, it was an awful job. I will say that buying a really really good expensive finish makes it worthwhile. I did NOT use that and the finish got scratched up very readily, which ticked me off after all that work.

This last time, I hired out. Seriously, my knees and back and entire body are aching in sympathy. I hope you nail it and it looks so fantastic when you finish that you glow with pride.

Well, week 1 of my project has come to a close. This detail finishing is killing me! The house has radiant heat so I have floor registers to deal with. Normally I would take the covers off but they have been painted over so many times it would just ruin the paint job I paid 12k for. Newbie, I never thought I would say thank goodness for parquet tile because of my sanding restrictions; inability to use a belt sander. I noticed some gumminess early in the process and again with my finish sanding in the corners of my tiles, but it is definitely not what you experienced. Most of the wax over time mixed with surface "stuff" and became resin. I had to start with 20 grit to "break" it and work my way up to 60. I'll get there... I did do one soapy thing though. I purchased what I refer to as the student Guild membership as a reward to myself. I have to maintain competency through continuing ed for my license as an OT, occupational therapist, so having access to the Guild journals was too enticing to pass up. I'm looking forward to receiving my email with my membership login. I'm glad I did not receive it right away or I would be reading instead of sanding Thanks for the company ladies. I'm homesick, sore and filthy. My DH has a pilot flying in for a bid so he has to finish his panel pictures to be prepared, so no company this weekend. Oh well, back to it. I'll review basic oil properties in my head as I go.