Floor sanding and polishing in Sydney

There is a floor under most old carpet in Sydney that is worth more than anything you could lay on top of it. Original hardwood in the inner west and the Beaches, brushbox and tallowwood in the north shore homes, blackbutt in the mid-century places — usually dark, usually scratched, and usually two days of work away from looking extraordinary.

Sanding is the highest-skill part of this trade and the easiest to do badly. Drum marks, edge chatter, a wavy finish under raking light and dust set into the coating are all permanent until the floor is sanded again — and a floor only has so many sands in it.

How we work

A belt or drum machine takes the body of the floor, an edger works the perimeter, and the corners are done by hand. Every machine runs connected to extraction.

The process

• Punch any proud nails, lift staples and tacks, and replace boards that are past saving.
• Cut back through progressive grits — coarse to remove the old coating and level the floor, then finer passes to remove the marks the previous grit left.
• Gap-fill where the job calls for it, using a filler tinted to the sanded timber.
• Edges and corners taken to the same finish as the field, because the perimeter is where cheap jobs are always visible.
• Vacuum, tack, and inspect under a low raking light before any coating goes down.
• One coat of sealer and two coats of finish as standard; three coats of finish on heavy-traffic areas.

Dust: what is honest to claim

No sanding process is completely dust-free, and anyone advertising "dust-free sanding" is overselling. What is真 achievable is dust containment: machines connected to M-class extraction, sealed doorways, and negative pressure where it helps. The difference is the whole house rather than one room.

It matters beyond the mess. Wood dust is a workplace health hazard, so containment is an obligation rather than a courtesy — and practically, airborne dust that settles into a wet coating is exactly what produces a gritty finish. Containing it is how you get a better floor, not just a cleaner house.

Water-based or solvent-based finish

Water-based polyurethane is the default for almost every home we work in now. It carries far lower VOCs than solvent-based, the smell clears in two to three days rather than lingering for a fortnight, several coats can go down in a day, and it stays clear instead of ambering — which matters enormously on light oak and blonde Australian species. It can also be re-coated later without a full re-sand.

Solvent-based polyurethane is fractionally harder and ambers over time, which some people want on older hardwood for the warmth it gives. It is slower, it smells, and it usually means a full re-sand when it is eventually worn through.

If you have a family, pets, tenants or an apartment where you cannot vacate for two weeks, water-based is almost always the right answer, and we will say so.

How many times can a floor be sanded?

A solid tongue-and-groove floor has wear layer above the tongue — commonly around 5 to 7mm — which is roughly five or six full sands over the floor’s life. Engineered boards depend entirely on the veneer: a 2mm wear layer is one light sand, while 4 to 6mm allows two or three. We check yours before quoting rather than after starting, because "this floor cannot be sanded again" is not a thing to discover mid-job.

At a glance