Refinishing Our Hardwood Floors

Everyone we talked to about it said it was going to be a lot of work, but I just don't think we comprehended how much work it was going to be until we were doing it.

So, we started with moving ALL of the furniture we could into the car port and then we covered everything else possible with tarp. Guys, we basically moved out of our house besides our kitchen things. Do you know how much work it is just to move? haha. Yeah, we're not moving for a long time because why would I want to do that again any time soon?

oodles of before pictures

Notice the paint in the doorway and there was some other paint spots in the house from previous owners or whoever?

We really didn't like the yellow tint that the floors had to them before..

So, we sent Hudson off with his Aunt Rebekah early Friday morning and then we quickly got to work. We started sanding in a bedroom and quickly realized that we did, in fact, want the 36 grit sand paper which meant a trip back to the place we rented the sander from. Then we sanded and sanded and sanded some more. I ran the drum sander and Taylor ran the edger. The drum sander really wasn't as scary to use as people online made it out to be, and the edger was way more frustrating than people made it out to be as you went through paper like crazy from touching the wall or it ripping or whatever other problems Taylor had with it.

We sanded from about 10 in the morning until 11ish at night only stopping to eat lunch and grab some dinner. The worst thing was that our "dustless" sander didn't work after the first bedroom. I was SO upset about that because it meant that we were constantly sweeping up piles and piles of dust and everything got 5 times more covered in dust than it would have otherwise. Thank goodness we had purchased masks and bought an extra box fan because they were the only saving grace with the dust.

Thankfully, each coat of sanding took less time than the previous one did.

It took us at least 2 hours to clean up all the dust in the house enough to feel comfortable enough to start staining. We swept and vacuumed and swept some more. We vacuumed off the baseboards, light switches, window sills, fans, and every other possible surface. We wiped down the counters and the little furniture that was still in the house. When we finished cleaning the house we hopped in the shower and got all of the dust off ourselves. 

Look at those beautiful bare wood floors!

The moment we put stain on we both looked at each other like "yessss! This is exactly what we wanted!" Staining went faster and slower than we expected it to. It went on so fast, but the waiting time to wipe it off made it take nearly 3 hours to do the whole house. We reallllly like the brush that Taylor is using to put the stain on. It held so much stain and definitely made it go faster. 

Talk about a long night....

I think I only slept for about 2 hours before I was up for the day.

The picture on the right was first thing Saturday morning and the picture on left is Sunday morning.

Putting poly on was a fairly easy process. I did all of the edging and Taylor used the same type of brush from the stain for the poly. We started our first coat of poly around 2ish and put 3 coats of poly on total. A 4th coat of poly would have been good, but we were out and didn't want to buy more and 3 coats was good enough.

Our beautiful finished floors. 

There are definitely plenty of imperfections and places where you can see our sanding marks and some poly bubbles, but we love the color SO much more and it looks and feels way better than it did before. . 

before & after side by side

& this snapchat about sums up the whole experience. 

I ran to the store the next morning and then literally sat in the car in our driveway for 10 minutes because I was too exhausted to even move. 

We were quoted nearly $2,800 to have about 650 square feet of floor refinished.
We did it ourselves for $374 and some change :)

Tips:
Don't rent a sander through Home Depot. Check local tool rental places they were way cheaper for us.
Earplugs and a mask are a must
Get rid of your children for this project ;)
Hire a professional if you can afford it because it is A LOT of work.