We have FINALLY sorted out the floors in our knocked-through living / dining area. Now I just need to sort everything else to complement it.

We hadn’t actually planned to do the floors until the weather got warmer, but then we booked in to get a new carpet fitted in the front room and suddenly realised it would be pretty stupid to get a new carpet in half the room and THEN fill the room with dust, so we thought we’d better get our shiz together and sand those floors.

Here is the dining room before. Carpet under the dining table? Nope.

The carpet itself wasn’t actually in too bad a state (apart from the scorch mark I made by using a heat gun to strip paint from a piece of furniture with no protection on the carpet whatsoever. YOLO).

So we hired a crazily big beast of an industrial sander, ripped up the lame carpet, and had at it.

First though, the evening before (it’s Friday night) we were at our friends Phil and Lucy’s house, having drinks to christen the lovely new kitchen they DIY’d the hell out of. I spent the whole evening saying ‘Guys I’m not drinking too much or mixing drinks because CAN YOU IMAGINE having to use an electric sander with a hangover?’. Unfortunately I was so busy telling people this, I forgot to eat anything substantial and as a result I woke up on Saturday morning with a cracking headache feeling like death. Luckily we had at least moved the furniture out the day before.

Fast forward to lunch time after I had tried to have a second sleep to rid myself of a hangover and I came skulking downstairs to see Jamie had ripped up the carpet.

Then was the slow process of crawling on hands and knees to pull out all of the staples used to hold down the underlay and the carpet grippers which were heartily nailed into the perimeter of the room.

Luckily the boards weren’t in TOO bad a state, apart form the odd crack and gap, because we hadn’t actually checked them until the day of the job when we’d already paid for the sander.

After that it was time to sand. I had warned the neighbours but OH.MY.GOD it was loud. We had ear protection but it was still an absolute shocker.

We hired and edging sander, too, which used a circular sanding sheet. Despite the name it still didn’t get super close to the edges.

We had hired the sanders for the whole weekend from Friday until Monday but I couldn’t face the noise again so on Sunday I finished of the edges and corners by hand.

After that I hoovered and then washed the floors  with warm soapy water and let them dry before hitting them with some varnish.

I got Wickes Floor Varnish, in a clear satin finish. It’s water-based and fairly quick drying. I was a little concerned about using water-based varnish, as I have read that it can need redoing more quickly, but we did three coats so I’m hoping that’s going to hold for some time.

I’m making some other changes to this room so will post pics once everything is back together.

The newly sanded floors have made such a dramatic change to the look of these floors. What do you think? Have you ever sanded floors? Do your neighbours now hate you too? 🙂

Let me know in the comments or come find me on Instagram.