How to refinish wood flooring

In case you were wondering, here's a quick explanation of how you can refinish your wood floors.

First you'll want to remove ALL of the nails and staples that are above floor level.

Then you'll want to rent a sander, a DRUM sander, like this:

You'll have to sand straight, with the grain, across the floor.

 The edges (as Koal, painted like a skunk for Halloween, would tell you) will not get sanded by this sander. You'll need a hand belt sander (power tool).

My dad used a LOT of sanding rolls in the sander...maybe 5-6 80 grit (the main grit we used) and some 65 and a couple of 100s. Sandpaper gets more fine as you go up in number, so the 65 grit is really going to take a lot of floor off, where as the 100 grit is going to take the least amount off.

Then you stain. I bought mahogany color stain. It's oil-based and smells awful. Pour into a paint tray and then apply with a lambswool applicator.

Lambswool applicator on a pole. ** this is not my house or my lambswool**

This is what it would look like to do this with an applicator on a pole. *Again this is not me or my house*

 I found that the pole system wasn't working so well for  me. I did the entire first coat with a hand applicator (not pictured, but the process looks like the man below, except I had plastic bags on my shoes and no knee pads). The second coat I started with the pole and finished by hand again.

What it looks like to sand by hand. *Again not my floor and I don't know this man--but those floors are gorgeous!*

Tonight and tomorrow I need to put at least two coats of clear polyurethane to seal the floor. I'll let you know how it goes!