DIYbanter - View Single Post - Removing gummy carpet padding from wood floors.

wrote in news:1118519739.034012.114590
@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

I have an old (1912) house with pine or fir wood floors
and I think shellac finish over stain. We just removed
some ~20 year old carpet and padding, and the floor doesn't
look too horrible, so we would like to preserve as much
of the original finish as possible.
...

Eventually we would like to apply a coat of paste wax to add
some protection and shine to the floor.

Been there, done that-- we've removed all the carpet from our 1958
house, five rooms and several hallways. The previous owners were
idiots and glued carpet pad to the oak floors; several rooms had more
than one later of carpet (topping out at three laters plus two pads
for a nearly 2" floor). As others have said, you're much better off
scraping and refinishing the floors than trying to save the existing
finish.

With the glued-down pads we ended up using a floor scraper, like
you'd use to rip up tile. Used carefully it was possible to remove
the pads without gouging the flooring, but small scratches were
common. This left a layer of adhesive that had to be removed, in
addition to the remains of the original varnish. We rented the
Varathane rotary floor sander, which is essentially a triple-head
random orbit sander with a vacuum attached. It actually worked pretty
well and we were able to run through three grits in a 12x14' room in
half a day. The corners I sanded with my 5" Bosch ROS to the same
grit. Even with the vacuum system it's a dusty process.

We refinshed the floors with the water-based Varathane satin finish.
It worked great, went down easily, and looks like a new floor. We've
only had this done for about six months so I can't comment on wear,
but if it lasts I'll be delighted. The only spots on the floor that
look bad are a few places where the wood is stained from my attempts
to use a 3M carpet adhesive removal product, which is what the local
flooring folks suggested to use on the carpet adhesive. It didn't
work at all; the mechanical approach was clearly better, though
dusty.

-kiwanda