I attempted to sand the pine flooring but it just didn't work out. We rented one of those orbital sanders from Home Depot and ran into several issues: 1) It was hard to control - easy for Michael but hard for me 2)It was slow going 3)I wasn't happy with the results because it left small "curly-cue" marks in the wood from the sander. I could get the marks out with my hand sander but that is a lot of work. 4) The final issue was that my pine flooring clogged up the sandpaper so frequently that I had to go back to HD after only sanding less than 1/4 of the floor to get more paper --when I rented the sander, they sent me home with "more than enough" to finish the job. Of course when I got there they were out of paper so I just went back home, loaded up the sander and returned it with the job unfinished. After thinking about it, I decided by the time I pay for all the sandpaper it is going to take and the amount of time involved and the fact I really wasn't happy with the result, I would be better off to just pay someone to sand it. Michael agreed but took it one step further and suggested we just get someone to finish it, too. The one thing that was an 'afterthought' in the kitchen turned out to be the biggest undertaking.
So the finishers showed up today, sanded the floor and stained it. It is not as dark I we had hoped but I'm not sure we can get it any darker. The finishers said they will add a second coat of stain tomorrow but after looking at it, I'm just not sure it will work. A lot of the red still shows but it definitely looks better than the old flooring. I heard a lot of comments from them about their sandpaper getting clogged rather often.
Here is a comparison to the old flooring (tip: the old flooring is the one running vertical that has the large gaps between each plank):
And the darker stain really brings out the grain patterns and sets off the white cabinets.
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