People often ask, can I sand and polish my own floor. The short answer is yes, the long answer is a much different story. The question has to be, can you sand it well? This is not necessarily anything to do with you personally, obviously some people will have more skill in operating machinery and applying coatings than others, this aside the variables are almost endless. One big hurdle is machinery, and where do you get it from?, for example do you hire it?, if so what is the quality of the machinery you can hire, some hire machinery is poorly maintained and sometimes they will simply hire you the wrong machine for the job. Recently we received a call from a DIY renovator in trouble, they had spent 2 days trying to sand a floor. When we arrived they had been hired a floor scrubber instead of a buffer ( got to love hire shops), the sander they had been hired was also out of balance, this had resulted in chatter marks throughout the floor. Sometimes this might all go right and you may get an adequate job or even a good job, but the chance of you getting a great job are slim. Even if all the equipment is right there is still the experience needed to select the right sanding grit and what machine to use at what time to get the desired results. On another call from a DIY'er they were trying to finish a floor with worn 60 grit disks and wondered why they weren't getting a nice finish. This of course is just the tip of the ice burg and there is way too much to go into here about the sanding process.
Then there is the coating or polishing as it is commonly called, various types of coatings require different application methods. These vary with the size of the area being coated and even the type of applicator used, again the nap or length of the fibres on the applicator vary for different coating. The next consideration is whether a sealer is required, this varies from wanting to use one to needing to use one. We next move onto drying times, these vary greatly between the different types of coatings and sealers. The drying time not only effect the finish or final coat, but the time between coats and also the time of curing before buffing the intermediate coats. This again has only brushed the surface of all the considerations.