Floored

I sanded and put a coat of polyurethane down in the front hallway last night. I guess I was high on the fumes, though, because I forgot to take a picture. It looks pretty cool already, and I'll post a pic after the next coat of poly. This wasn't exactly a high priority (compared to, say, the waterfall coming off the end of the gutter that I noticed when it rained a couple days ago). But I'd been looking forward to trying out my new tool, a Milwaukee 1/2 sheet sander. It pretty much kicks ass.

Sanding floors with a palm sander (even a big one like this), is at best, a very time-consuming activity. I took this approach just because the floor was unfinished (pictures) and really just needed some stains sanded out, and the surface cleaned up a bit. If you tried to sand a finished floor this way, or one that needed any significant amount of material removed to make the surface even, it would take forever.

I started with 60 grit to get the stains out and take down some ripples from the previous (not very good) floor sanding job, then finished with 150 and 220 grit. All told I did the whole hallway, about 16 feet by 4 feet, in a couple hours.