Preparing the floorboards for sanding

The plan for the hallway floor (upstairs and downstairs), is to sand, stain and varnish it.  But before that, we must prep!  You can look back to when we revealed what was lurking under the laminate here, but overall, it wasn't too bad.

A few floorboards needed replacing as they had been poorly taken up in the past by others so that was definitely on the list.  Also, the nails holding all the floorboards down needed punching so that they sat below the surface.  This was so that they didn't catch the sandpaper on the floor sander.

I couldn't find the right size floorboards in B&Q, Wickes etc... so I headed to our local timber merchant to get some cut to size.

I had to cut them to length at home, but this was no problem as I got to use my brand new toy!

I kept losing concentration and taking my finger off the trigger (not clever!), but it was amazing! Like a knife through butter.  You can see I used a clamp to make a makeshift guide with a piece of scrap wood which worked very well.

I had difficulties nailing the boards down, as I had to check the nails wouldn't be too long that they would end up going through the electrical cables.  I had to make a quick trip to the shops to buy some shorter nails as the ones I had were cutting it far too fine.  I also had to mind the heating pipes too!

I pre-drilled the holes in the floorboards so that they wouldn't split, as many of the nails were pretty close to the edge.  That seemed to work well.

And the finished article:

I know they look pretty odd now, but I'm hoping once stained, they will blend right in.

I also punch all the nails down, with a nail punch I bought from Wickes.  It's not the best to be honest, and it's already deformed at the tip with some light use, so probably not the best for longevity, but it did the job.

Above: Protruding nails

The tools.

Hopefully I'll shortly be sharing with you the sanded and stained floor!