Restoring a 100 year old wooden floor...by ourselves!

[wantacatplease]

Anyone done this or know of a good online resource to read on how to do this cheaply, easily, and not make a total disaster of it?

We are starting small and doing our bedroom first, just to test the quality of the wood and stuff.

The wood looks in pretty good condition but has glue and stuff on it. Can this all be sanded down? Or do we need to strip it off with some sort of tool or chemical?

Do we absolutely need to hire a floor sander or can we do it by hand?

There are a few planks where the edge is pretty damaged...but I think as long as it's sanded and varnished it will add to the authenticity of the look of the floor? or is it more appropriate to mend or replace the damaged planks?

We're on 0 budget, by the way, but the carpet is RANK and musty and old and the floor is crying out to breathe. Can maybe spend £50 to get started.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Having restored some Victorian floors a few properties ago I think you really do need to hire a floor sander. It would be back breaking work and incredibly slow to try and hand sand! You probably wouldn't get deep enough by hand sanding to get rid of the glue etc on top. It is worth the hiring fees, I think. Sorry I know this isn't the answer you wanted.

No, that's great Horten, thank you. I think deep down I knew it would be too difficult by hand but just wanted to see if anyone else gave it a go first.

The wood looks in pretty great shape, actually. Very thick planks and hardly any damage. No massive gaps, either. Should look great when it's done, so maybe we should wait until budget permits and do it properly.

Probably a good plan.

Don't know whether this will be relevant, but we removed some floor covering that had been stuck down with evostick or something similar. It had been spread all over the floor.

First we scored the floor covering in strips about a foot wide. We then ironed it over newspaper a bit at a time to soften the glue and pulled the covering up rolling it up.

We then used a heat gun and paint scrapers to get (most of) the rest of the glue off the oak floorboards. We then polished them with a polish/treatment for wooden floors.

We haven't sanded, just scraped the glue off carefully.

Interesting, TB, thank you. I'm not sure ours needs sanding either, if we did it your way, except maybe some of the planks with not quite perfect edges. Where did you get the heat gun?