Anyway, your floors look like they are in better shape than our old house when we went through the same process of rip, flip, trip, snip strip and pimp (uh… ok, the rhyming ends at the last one). I almost went against the grain two or three times and dad warned me about doing that. It seems to etch weird patterns into the floor and rip up the pieces of wood that sit higher along the wood’s grain. We must have rented the exact same two sanders, because I had the same complaints about the muscle aches and the uselessness of the circular “edger” sander.

We did two coats of polyurethane after the sanding and staining. It was great, you can pretty much ignore the whole “ventilation warning” on the side of the can. It’s better in a closed room with lots of candles.