floor varnish help please

offwhite

Hello

I hope someone can give me some useful advice.

One of the reasons we bought our 1930s house is because I love the varnished light oak floorboards. We've had builders working and although they have had sheeting down in the main area, the beautiful floor is now very dusty and not at all beautiful. The builder reckons that he'll clean up and "give it a good mop" and it will be fine. The sanding/varnishing company we contacted is asking nearly £900 (or £750 if he doesn't fill in the small gaps) and says it all has to be sanded and revarnished. (Total of 40 m2 - hall, 2 receptions).

Who am I supposed to believe? And is £900 reasonable?

I have to make a decision very very soon so any help would be appreciated

Thanks a lot

PS Alternatively, we could just fill in the gaps ourselves and then give it a good polish?

misgrace

You could hire and industrial sander from a hire shop, but its quite hard work, so you have to muscles like popeye lol.
But it would be a lot cheaper, then you could buy your own varnish and varnish it yourself.
Why dont you check out your local hire shops and see how much they charge.

devmcc

Hi Offwhite - I have a similar 1930's property and have just sanded & polished 5 rooms in the house from scratch!! - it is really straight forward and took me a day and a helf to do them all.. cost us to hire £45 to hire the sander for a weekend, plus £1.00 per sanding sheet (from HHS Hire - they drop off and pick up) and £20 for the varnish - I AM SO Proud!! Have a go yourself - it is worth the effort... it should be very easy to do as they have been done in the past...

never_enough

I've done it before & it should be a doddle as they've already been sanded. It may not be necessay to do though, your builder could be right. If not I would discuss it with him again, what is he prepared to do?
If you do sand & varnish you can get matt water based varnish, touch dry in 20 mins. It's brill & gives a lovely finish.

ixwood

The varnish should have protected the wood and just wipe clean, I'd have thought.

If it does need a sand, I'd agree and say DIY. We did ours when we moved in.

Also, you can buy the sanding sheets much cheaper elsewhere.

cryptokit

Well I might be stating the obvious here, but clearly try giving it all a good wash down first. Its the quicker and cheaper option. Let it dry, and have another look at it.

If you do need to go down the sanding route, then self hire will be cheaper, although arguably the experts will have a lot more experience using the equipment. I used it on the floor of my church, and it took a team of us a good while to strip back to good wood, ready for varnish.

On the subject of varnish, we used Ronseal Diamond Hard floor varnish. It isn't cheap - it was something like £20 per smallish tin, and we had to use a number of them. *However* it has stood up to heavy use, including chairs being moved around, and dances being held in the venue, etc. Don't skimp on the varnish quality, as you will have to redo the job sooner.

Hope this helps, PM me if you want to ask more.
Kit