refinishing plank wood flooring

DGotlieb

Active Member
As it seems unlikely we will be using our stage floor any time soon, I am looking into solutions for an ongoing issue we've been having.

We paint our floors for each show, about 4 season ago we did a treatment and the layers since then haven't properly bonded to that layer. If we put down tape and peel it up it peels paint from every other show since then revealing the sparkly white floor from that production of nutcracker.

We have plank flooring so not the normal issue of cheap maso causing us issues. So I rented a floor sander from home depot and went thru several sanding drums because they quickly gummed up with paint and we only got like a season of paint.

Does any one have any tip or suggestions that may speed up this process? Or an alternate choice solution.
 
It will still be a long slow process, but a good heat gun and a scraper (possibly followed by a wire brush) might be quicker and certainly use less consumables than the sander. Take care to have good ventilation set up. It will probably need finishing with a sander anyhow. I've heard that scrapers on oscillating multi-tools work well for paint removal, probably with heat, but have no experience one way or the other with trying that myself.
 
Were currently removing about 10 years of Poly from our pine plank floor using a big orbital sander and 36 grit sand paper, its taken us about 3 and a half weeks for about 20 layers of poly to get down to wood again.
 
I was using a 40 grit paper on a drum sander rented from home depot. I actually started the project before given the shelter at home, we did two full passes and then had to leave. Of course I rented it for a week and then was only able to do a few hours with it. It's super fun.
 
Not the answer you want to hear, but we tried sanding 30 or so layers of paint and all it did was gum up the sander and make little balls of paint. Did not have the patience to heat gun 600 sq. ft. Ended up just covering it over with new hardboard. My guys and I think the solution to the "cheap maso" is a first coat of concrete sealer over it all before your first show paint. Good luck!
 
As it seems unlikely we will be using our stage floor any time soon, I am looking into solutions for an ongoing issue we've been having.

We paint our floors for each show, about 4 season ago we did a treatment and the layers since then haven't properly bonded to that layer. If we put down tape and peel it up it peels paint from every other show since then revealing the sparkly white floor from that production of nutcracker.

We have plank flooring so not the normal issue of cheap maso causing us issues. So I rented a floor sander from home depot and went thru several sanding drums because they quickly gummed up with paint and we only got like a season of paint.

Does any one have any tip or suggestions that may speed up this process? Or an alternate choice solution.
My best recomendation is to hire a flooring contractor to sand, fill and apply two coats of PPG Breakthrough wrought iron black. Allow at least one day to dry between coats. Keep wet edge going with grain. Hard to fill gouges or splinters can use use Ardex feather fill. Then new coat each year. You still may get some tape pulls but it will touch up and match great.
 
I have to constantly remind myself that floor sanders, even the "industrial" ones, are intended for stripping stain and film finish, not latex-based paints. I've yet to meet a sander that doesn't gum up the way you're describing - it's just not how they're intended to work.

For what it's worth, I'm in agreement w/ Larry and Bill here, too. No slap to you and your skills but shopping it out to a pro, especially at the point of having tried yourself and hit roadblocks in the process, helps to ensure you're One and Done from here on out.

If that's not an option, financially or otherwise, you might look into renting an industrial floor planer (like an electric hand planer but, you know, for floors!) or something with a rotating blade that would "cut" or shear all those layers of paint off instead of abrade them (i.e., something intended for heavy material removal). *THEN* get a floor sander and even it all out once you're down to bare wood.

I confess I don't know if such an animal even exists but I don't relish the idea of you on your hands & knees with an benchtop electric hand planer trying to shave 1/8" of paint off the kind of square footage you're talking about....

Good luck!

-jake
 

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