Anyone got any experience with floorboards?

I have a varnished floor and we hate the colour. I think it’s only a couple of coats. Will it sand off or is it better to strip it?

Hire a sander and it will be off in minutes.

Stripping would be a horrific mess IMO.

Horrific noise/effort of sanding much better 🙂

Get someone in to sand it, we had out parquet floor restored and the sanding part made almost no mess (big sanding machine connected to an even bigger hoover machine). Barely any dust made it out the rooms.

Is this like Snog, Marry, Avoid only more er.. forthright?

We recently had a painted floor we wanted taken back to bare boards – original idea was to sand it but we ended up scraping it. With a big double handed scraper (you pull backwards toward you) it was pretty easy and on our old victorian boards looks very appealing as it left all the pattina . We then sanded down through the grades gently, and then osmo’d to finish it. It looks great in our proletariat hovel with rugs and the fire hearth. In an 80’s bungalow, maybe not so much

There are a several vids on Uchub to amuse yourself with – it seem popular in America for some reason. One guy in particular really goes for it

Have the boards already been sanded?  If not I would certainly strip them to retain the patina.  One room in my flat has the origional 150yr old boards that I stripped rather than sand.  It looks fantastic retaining all the charectar

Cheers for the advice everyone. Seems it’s sand or strip to retain the patina (I had to look that up!) thanks again.