In renovated homes, returning floors back to their original beauty can be a challenge. Even if the majority of the wood was protected by woven, throw rugs, other parts of the floor can show age and need a new finish to be attractive. Some sections of the surface may be worn down from decades of traffic, discolored by stains, or faded by the sun. If the wood flooring has its original coating of varnish, shellac or painted, preparing the wood for refinishing can be simple or complex. One criteria determining the method of stripping is what final look you desire – rough, hewn planks showing their decades of wear; super-smooth, glossy wooden boards or somewhere in between. If you want to keep the rougher floors for a farmhouse look, then aggressive, electrical sanders can be used. If the aristocratic, wealthier look is your dream, then strip with environmentally safe, liquid strippers such as SoyGel.
Wood Floor Stripping
If the coating is shellac, denatured alcohol will work. With liquid strippers, assure good air circulation is present.
If the coating is old paint, first test it for toxic lead. If lead is detected in the paint, do not open sand these painted floors! Always wear appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) and use lead safe work practices when working with lead paint. You can sand the floor safely if you attach a HEPA vacuum to collect all the lead paint dust. Or to be safer, use a Speedheater 1100 Infrared Paint Remover which generates no lead fumes and minimal dust. With any type of paint, you can set the infrared stripper on the floor instead of holding it. This is much less taxing on your muscles than sanding is. After the paint bubbles, the stripper is moved to another painted area to heat while the first area is scraped.
IR Paint Remover on Porch
Clean up is faster with the infrared method than with sanding. Read more about stripping lead paint: Lead Paint Removal
Completely Paint Stripped Floor
But what do you do when you have disgusting, wall-to-wall carpets or badly-worn linoleum or vinyl hiding your wood floors? You need to completely rip them off. Assume linoleum and vinyl floorings installed before the mid-1980s have toxic asbestos and take safety precautions to contain and dispose of these coverings. But how do you even pull up really stuck on carpet, vinyl or linoleum? Usually with brute strength or by prying them off with hand tools.
There is an easier and faster way – use infrared heat! Speedheater Infrared (IR) Paint Removers can be your solution. These heat paint strippers can be placed off the surface of the linoleum or vinyl (not synthetic carpet, obviously) to make them more pliable and easier to rip off. Unfortunately, the thick, black, mastic adhesive which tenaciously held the coverings in place on the wood flooring often remains on the wood after successful removal of the rugs or sheets.
Again, the Speedheater Infrared (IR)Paint Remover comes to your rescue. The infrared heat softens the adhesive significantly for quick scraping without damaging the wood. Dull scrapers such as traditional, flexible metal or plastic putty scrapers may require several heatings and scrapings. Eco-Strip’s hardened steel scrapers with sharp, beveled edges, wide blades and long handles make the scraping job faster and more thorough. Their long handles allow you to use both hands and increase the downward pressure and depth of scraping to get the majority of mastic off in one heating.
Once the carpet, linoleum, or vinyl and the adhesive are removed, the remaining adhesive can be sanded to reveal the full beauty of the solid, old wood. Then follow your heart’s desires, reposition wood strips into a design, stain it a new color or simply apply a new clear coating.
Stand back and look at what you revealed! History & glamor returned.
Restored Floors
Thanks to Bob Yapp of Belvedere School for Hands-On Preservation in Hannibal, MO for his photos of wood floor restoration.
