We just did our salon floor last weekend. I will admit that I cheated a bit. A friend who does wood floors for a living came up and did most of the work. He also brought professional tools and talent.
Total time was about 6 hours over two days. Sanding and scraping the floor to bare wood was most of that time. The floor had been re-coated in the past. A PO appears to have just re-coated over the existing without removing any of the hatch hardware. I removed all the hardware and cleaned and polished it before reinstalling.
Sanded with 50, 60, 80, 100, and 220 before the final coat. We went through a lot of 50 and 60. The existing finish gummed up the paper quickly. Once the finish was removed, the rest of the sanding was easy.
I don't know much (or anything) about floor finishes, but I suspect most any quality household floor would work fine. My friend was concerned about what was on the floor before sanding. Said he probably would have had to use a different finish if the previous finish had been oil based instead of water based.
We applied five coats of finish. Bona Classic Seal. Three coats of Bona Mega, and Bona Traffic for the top coat.
The floor turned out much nicer than I thought it could. We will see how it wears. I understand Bona products are toward the higher end of floor finishes.
