What to do with this floor?

[Gallopingunicorns]

We have pulled up the carpet in our lounge and are sanding the floor off. The floor is the original Victorian pine boards. They are in generally good condition. However, some of them seem to have been "finished" in whatever the dark boards are. The sander barely touches is and it pretty much chews the sanding sheets up. It is better with a fine grade paper but obviously that doesn't strip it. I was hoping to finish it in a "raw" wax oil which would be a light natural finish but it won't work with the floor boards being multicoloured.

What should we do?

If you can, you could take up the darker boards and flip them over.

@Gallopingunicorns Likely the colour difference is because the 19th century people had rugs down. I renovated a Victorian house and the rooms upstairs were like this, with paler boards in the middle and darker round the edge. It's not a problem, just sand and oil and let the darker bits be darker. It looks nice.

Yes, definitely fits this pattern. I really wanted it a bit more uniform. I love the attached but I don't think we'll get it to that.

I'd embrace the variations in colour - I already did and it looks great.

Do you have any photos you can share please? Would be really interested to see what it could look like.

A proper industrial floor sander you can hire will take that off

I could do photos next week, can't now as it's an Airbnb and people staying. Here is just one photo showing a bit of the floor, though.

Looks brilliant 😍

Here's one I found of the bedroom, you can maybe see the floor is darker under the table by the chimney breast? The boards were hand sanded (a lighter touch, retains the character), gaps filled, and varnished not oiled.

@Gallopingunicorns I mean hand-sanded with a machine hand-sander, not completely by hand!

Its likely a bitumen based paint to protect the exposed wood. Be very careful as its not good to breath in so wear protection. You can use a specialised solvent (a tar or bitument remover) to remove/reduce it but dont use a basic.generic one as it can make it sink more into the wood. It's the tar that is gumming up the sheets.

My sister just sanded her off in a big dining room. You can do it you just need to power throught it. She hired a professional machine but it still took her ages. She refused to do it with the other 5! rooms so did a more basic sand and then stained its a slightly darker shade which minimised the colour difference, it was a oak stain i believe and it looked really great, shes moved house now and regrets all the work!

We sanded ours right back then stained. Can still see the knots in the wood

They'll be all the same colour once fully sanded back. You need to hire a professional sander and start with 40 grit paper going diagonally across the boards to get them completely flat. You could hire someone to do it if you don't want to do it yourselves. We've done our own, it's hard work but much much cheaper.

This. Really common in victorian homes, edges of the room painted in dark tarry paint, middle left clear for rugs. Horrible stuff. Costs a fortune in sanding sheets. It does come off but you need to hire an industrial sander.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DIYUK/comments/106jmay/floor_sanding_boards_covered_in_black_substance/

One caveat to all that is that we later regretted it. Did a long and v beautiful job on the floors but never lifted the boards and insulated under. Perishing winters followed. We never had the heart to destroy all our hard work.

When we moved to the next house, we just laid new wooden floors on top with insulation fabric underneath.