I would be very grateful for advice: wish I'd never started to sand my floor and don't want to make a bad job worse!
I have a fairly old house with (? pine) floorboards that were probably stained many years ago but in good condition albeit for a few gaps between them.
I hired drum and edging sander and bought some Lecol 7500 to fill the gaps.
The sanding was difficult in that only the centre of each floor board seemed to yield to the drum sander (? curved boards): I therefore had to use the edging sander a great deal (back-breaking).
I was quite pleased with the end result (stupidly!) and the filling process and subsequent sanding seemed to go quite well.
I applied the first coat of Ronseal Diamond Hard Floor Varnish (Medium Oak) last night - looked very nice except perhaps a bit darker than I'd wanted, and retired to bed. At 5am I awoke and crept downstairs expecting to admire the fruits of my labours but it looked awful! The floor is a mass of little cresent dents from my inexpert sanding (these weren't at all obvious before the varnish); in addition, the surface has a nasty "plasticy" feel and might not be wood at all - the natural grain seems to have disappeared under the varnish. Perhaps my expectations were unrealistic but I didn't expect it to look like this.
I'm tempted to sand it off again but I might well make a bad job worse. Should I give in and save up for a professional to step in (can it be rectified anyway?). My wife's away and this was supposed to be a surprise for her - it certainly will be!
