Wood Floor Refinishing FAILS! (YouTubers Called Out!)

what's up youtube world it's ben from how to sand a floor in this video i'm going to point out some of the atrocities that i have seen committed on floors in youtube videos so if you find this video helpful and helps you avoid making some of the committing some of the same atrocities then please click like and click subscribe the first video that we're going to criticize here i'm i'm trying not to hate i'm just trying to help people and the first video we're watching is refinishing hardwood floors costs at home depot rentals the first thing that i can see straight away is that he's using a square buff which is um a big it's like a palm sander but massive and all it does is kind of just wobble a bit like this and he is sanding a pitch pine floor and or as they call it in america hard pine and these floors are absolutely terrible to sand especially when they're really old and they've got deep dents in them it's a very sappy wood so it clogs up the abrasives i've said before about these machines these square buffs they should only really be used for the very last pass on the floor to make it ready for the um stain so to give it a a scratch pattern that is the same all over the floor and right into the corners and usually doing it with a 120 grit but the surface area on these things are massive and you can't you can't sand floors with them which you you're about to see perfectly in this video so let's have a little watch [Applause] they turned it on and now you can see a lot of a big change straight away so all of the undented areas the high spots they they get sanded off straight away and it it looks like it's making a big difference and it is making a big difference but it's not going to get down into the the gaps and um or into the dips in the floor or the dents and so let's just watch a bit more of this [Applause] [Music] you see that okay pause pause pause pause pause look at that you can see all the the um the scratches and dents and stuff that were done on the previous sanding like he's only sanded the peaks of the floor off all the little dents and stuff that square buff is not going to touch it and he that's basically it that's what he's done on his floor he's using a really cool script as well absolutely shocking shocking i feel sorry for the guy this must have been soul destroying now he's using a palm sander which is just oh my god like is it oh shoot me if i had to sand the edges of a pitch pine floor with a with a palm sander oh my goodness just shoot me oh look he's tickling it tickling it the floor's laughing yeah not doing a single thing congratulations look at that floor look at it the dents and scratches all around oh my goodness he doesn't get that out that's not how your floor should look there are so many videos on youtube and and pictures i see on blogs and stuff people that sand their floor once and then they make a how-to vlog and this is how they've got their floor looking and they they think that it looks great which is funny because if i did that i wouldn't get paid yeah when people do it themselves this is absolutely fine look and he's he's trying to fix it up but look it's not working it's absolutely terrible this is hilarious this is why you need to wear a respirator a mask do you see the airborne dust oh my goodness this is a travesty this is just terrible this is definitely the worst of the lot less let's fast forward a bit [Music] [Music] okay i've just gone and skipped ahead towards the end um and uh as you can see here it's just he's lacquering it now um i think he he's using an oil-based um polyurethane i think he's sealing it first look at the state of this floor it is an absolute disaster that looks it would have been better if he would have just put a coat over it to make it shiny now he's highlighted all the dents and dings and scratches it looks terrible from start to finish everything took two days but if you just sanded it properly properly that probably would have taken about two weeks if you wanted to sand it down enough to get all of those all of the old finish off look it looks absolutely atrocious he should have just put a lack of coat over the top to make it shiny and he would have got a better effect i think enough of this um if you want to watch this video as i say it's refinishing hardwood floors costs and home depot rentals dvb dvb dvb it's one of the highest viewed videos on the subject so make sure you go and check that out it might actually be in the um the sidebar wherever that is so uh check that out let's see what's up next okay the next video we have is hardwood floor refinishing by trial and error or as i like to call it hardwood floor refinishing by error error error by matthias wandel so this has got the most views on youtube this guy is some sort of diyer um but he i can't bash this guy so much because bait it's almost like he's on purpose doing the most ridiculous things to his floor that he possibly can it's like i don't want to i don't want to search on the internet whatsoever i just want to create machinations in my brain and and just do random stuff to my floor and see if it works um because this is literally a train wreck and um to pretend that this is even a um that someone that intended their floor to look like this is is obviously he says it himself that's not what he wants so let's take a look at this so basically what he's doing is he's using a a handheld belt sander which um i mean i've done it before 10 years ago and um i mean it's very tough to see on these uh videos like how much um you know how much they've actually managed to get the the old finish off the floor or the dents and scratches it doesn't look that great now he's just decided to start scraping the floor with a corner scraper now there's a bit of a difference between a proper floor scraper when you have hand scraped hardwood floors and then just a corner scraper like this and um and yeah he creates this this thing this thing to unbelievable he's created this thing to try and and um make it so that he can scrape the floor with this tiny thing from standing up it's just what a joke actually it's kind of a clever idea right i don't know it's i'll go give him some credit he's got a little spring on it and it's and it and it helps to hold it down i don't know quite a funny idea maybe the hardwood floor scraping guys should actually take a leaf out this guy's book and create a system that you can do it from standing up because scraping hardwood floors by hand is a slog i mean that is hard work you can't you know that is not for the faint of heart let's let's skip ahead a bit here put putting this putting this um floor sander on the edge of us on the end of a stick like this this is uh again i mean it's it's kind of genius but uh also terrible like oh it's not gonna make life easier honestly it's it's you're not your floor's not going to look good it's the most important thing like yeah you can work hard but you need your floor to look good because that's the thing that's going to last for years the hard work will be forgotten oh absolutely hilarious oh my he's he's brushing the dust over the the wood to fill the gaps which is just going to come out when he finishes it with the lacquer and now he's scraping with that on a pole scraping the finish over the floor just here's my advice okay don't refinish your flaws by trial and error do some googling do not listen to people that have done it themselves once on their own home listen to professionals there are so there are so many professionals that upload videos and they don't get any views on youtube some of the people i know put up stuff that i think is unreal in terms of skill and uh they don't get any views on youtube people like this get views it's just it's sad don't listen to professionals that's what i'm saying don't do it by trial and error that's ridiculous okay enough of this what have we got up next we have how to refinish hardwood floors by skill power tools this how to refinish hardwood floors video i saw this is posted in september 2010 this is long before i ever posted a video online and this again this is not too bad i can't hate the guy he's definitely probably a better presenter than me unfortunately if any of you have watched more of my videos then you know that i'm not a very good speaker i can't communicate very well and i don't present very well so but this guy does present fairly well and he has got some good tips on it his tips on filling the gaps are good um the only thing that i don't really like about his videos are that the um he's using a finishing sander to start with it has started with a 36 grit which will make it a lot easier but what these videos never show you is that when you start with a sander with these massive surface areas is it it takes ages if you've got a floor that's perfectly flat and it's in very good condition sometimes it's possible to do this but um you can see the wear marks by the front door let's watch a bit of this uh skip forward a little bit so yeah similar to the the previous video when you're using a finishing sound like this and it cuts all youtube videos are cut obviously but um you know you don't know how much time you're cutting out i know that if you've got a knackered floor these finishing sanders can take forever to get the finish out to get all the dents and scratches out to get the floor clean and ready for a finish detail sanding here we go he calls it detail sanding detail sanding is usually referred to as the the very corners so he has got very small edges because he used that um that finishing sander but these two palm sanders are nowhere near powerful enough to um to get the job done so uh at least in a time efficient manner that looks good it's got to be quick and it's got to look good usually with with machines like this if if you do it quickly then it's not going to look good if you if it looks good then you've taken forever on it that you can tell by the way that's swirling it's just a random orbital it's not a geared orbital like the festool which i might have a link to in the description um that's on the it's on amazon the festool that's the one hand sander that i would use on on floors if i wanted to sand a floor by hand i would use the festool rotex ro150 right what do we have here he's doing the finishing let's hurry this up a bit here's a great tip using the using a trowel to stop yourself from getting any edging that you want to protect but he's brushing all the way around the edge of the floor first which i mean i i i don't know i've seen this viruthane before but in my experience you want to just do the edges in the in the section that you're doing and then you roll it out or mow hair or t-bar and then you brush the next bit you don't want to brush all the way room like the way around the room like he has there because it dries out and it can cause marks it looks terrible the other thing is the way he's he's uh he's just poured all the way the length down the board now he's rubbing it like i don't know where that's disappearing to but usually what he's just pulled down there would be enough to to coat half the room so what he's using is a mohair um not a mohair roller a mohair pad [Music] [Music] you know what it doesn't look too bad and i mean obviously you can't see up close um and obviously he seems like he doesn't do he doesn't do this every day but he is handy with tools but um that doesn't look too bad but i still think save yourself some time that those big sanders with the multiple heads they're supposed to be for after you've finished with the floor sander and the edge sander it's that suppose that's the thing that gets it really smooth and gets the scratches out the linear scratch marks as he says in that video that it's got a random pattern and it doesn't really matter which way you use it because it just polishes it smooth makes it really nice and smooth so um again check out this video how to refinish hardwood floors by skill power tools of the three that we've looked at so far i mean that's uh by far the best the next video we have here is how to sand and save a wood floor by ron tanner i haven't even looked through this one yet but i can just tell that we're gonna find some absolute gems in here now just look at this a layer of polyurethane look at what someone has done to their floor before that is absolutely horrific obviously this is not his fault by the looks of it he didn't do this someone previously had done this i mean that is just impressive okay so he's decided to use a a handheld belt sander which many people do many people for some reason think that it's a good idea to sand the floors by hand and just don't quite know how much work is involved so yeah he's just absolutely blowing dust out all over the place here um which he then decides to uh hoover behind him look he just changed the clip and now he's got the hoover behind him it's just i mean even with this belt sander it's you're not going to be pressing as hard but it's just going to take so long you're going to spend so much time on your feet and um on your sorry on your hands and knees um like look at this see when when you first when he's first started this and he's made he's made a bit of an impact already he is he hasn't he's not going to have realized how long that this is going to take him it's only after about half an hour to an hour is when he's gonna go hold on a minute this is gonna take forever even now you can see that the sander is doing the peaks and uh all of these little dents that were put in last time by the previous person to sand this floor um they're still there so all these little dents and things you can see them they're shining in the floor a lot of people will then tend to do is start angling the sander to try and get them out which is where the problems came from in the first place the reason why those dents and dings there from from the previous sounding is because someone couldn't get a bit of dirt or a dent out so they angled the sander to make it faster and it ends up making it look atrocious what you should be doing instead is using a floor sander or an edger to remove more wood until it's clean and flat not dig into these little sections and create these dips that just look absolutely horrific so i'm just going to fast forward here to this section where he's using alcohol or something to clean off the floor i think to clean the dirt off the floor i haven't got the sound on so but can you see all the darkness in the grain of the wood there and right now you can see even before he's put anything on it there's it's really dark in the grain that's dirt that's gotten into the soft grain this is red oak so the the soft grain in red oak is is really open and dirt can get down deep into it so you can see all of the the dirt that's still in the grain he needs to sand the floor a lot more to get that out so these videos will never do justice just to how bad these floors look when they're done so don't take these people people's advice you know it's you know if you search for professional like if you search for floor sanding in new york and you see videos you don't see people on their hands and knees standing in the middle of the floor with a handheld sander you know you're gonna see people with stand-up sanders getting it done in a reasonable time all of the people that use hand tools like this or orbital sanders because they're too scared to use a floor sander they don't take longer they just never get it done properly it won't it never looks good i mean look at this right now look the floor looks atrocious and is that easy lacquering now no he's just cleaning it i think i'm not sure and just like everyone else they take pictures of it or record a video of it looking all shiny and pat themselves on the back when uh it actually looks terrible i just wanted to show you this little gem floor is done and this floor in particular you're going to see some dings it is not worth sanding the floor down that far to cut to get to those dings particularly on a hard working floor like this okay so he says it's not worth sanding the floor down enough to get these dents out the problem is these dents are far shallower than you think they are they look quite deep but they're usually about half a mil maybe a millimeter and it is worth sanding the floor down enough to get them out because you want the floor to look new every time you sand the floor you want to bring it back to new and then you nacker it out and then you sand it again and bring it back to new this is someone that's just given up they've given up trying to get these marks out he's probably spent like four days sanding this floor and now he's just given up all hope of removing these dents and dings so uh i'm sorry about this video i don't want to be a hater i don't want to put other people down just want to help people prevent um from making these same mistakes so if you did find it helpful then please click like click subscribe on my face and um i should have some links to more of my videos right here so click them click them now [Music] click [Music]

Channel: How To Sand A Floor

Views: 2,883,431

Keywords: Refinishing Hardwood Floors, refinishing hardwood floors diy, hardwood floor refinishing, hardwood floor refinishing by trial and error, wood floor refinishing, how to refinish hardwood floors

Id: mHiF8xwjRGI

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 02 2018