Sanding and Lacquering to Pitch Pine Parquet Floor in Torquay

Oakwood have been busy restoring a beautiful pitch pine parquet floor at a bungalow in Torquay.  We sanded their kitchen/diner, hallway and bedroom.

On arrival the technicians took time to carefully inspect the wooden floor, to ensure that it was solid and that there would be no loose blocks needing repair before the sanding work could commence. During this process our technicians carry out several moisture readings to ensure that the floor is able to receive a water-based coating system. Improper moisture readings, or a failure to take them, could result in further complications, meaning that this is an important part of the procedure.

The pine floor had been sanded previously with a hired belt sander. Whilst these seem appealing to the DIY market, they are inadequate tools to correctly finish parquet flooring. This floor had heavy sanding marks and dips where it had been very badly sanded over the years.

Sanding started with 40-grit on the Pallmann Cobra belt sander. This enables the technicians to heavily sand the wood, removing all the old sanding marks and ensuring that the pine blocks are at a consistent level. When sanding pitch pine parquet it’s important to always sand against the grain. This can prove to be a challenge to some people who are not adequately trained in floor sanding, or people who take it on as a DIY task.

Equipped with the latest machinery, sanding parquet floors is a specialist area for Oakwood Specialist Services. The Pallmann Spider’s planetary head allows the operator to sand in any direction without leaving any scratch patterns from the grits used; the process is very fast and works extremely well on soft wood parquets.

The whole floor was filled and the edges were sanded with a very fine finish, to match the main field of floor. Once this was complete the floor was ready to be finished.

The customer had requested that the finish be as natural as possible, but still wanted us to use a lacquer. With this in mind, we opted to use Pallmann AllBase Primer and PallX 98 Gold for the finishing coats. These two products give a natural finish but also maintain the beautiful tones of each parquet block.