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Old parquet flooring looks beautiful when it's been given a new lease of life through proper sanding and finishing.  However, sanding parquet requires a different technique to sanding solid wood strip or planks.  Read on to find out how to do it.

The correct way to sand parquet flooring

1. Before you begin sanding the floor, check it over thoroughly to make sure there are no loose or damaged blocks, or protruding nails.  
2. Parquet block flooring should always be sanded at an angle of 45 degrees to the grain of the wood.  This ensures that the blocks remain flat and achieves a smooth finish.  It's not advisable to simply sand the whole floor in one direction across the grain of the blocks, nor will sanding in two different directions achieve a good result.  
3. Begin by using a 40 grit floor sanding belt and work from the centre of the floor outwards towards the walls.  This first pass is designed to level the floor and remove any deep scratches in the wood.  Remember to always make each pass perpendicular to your previous one so that you are always sanding with the grain of each wooden block.  
4. Now use an edging sander with a 40 grit disk to level and sand the floor's edges.  
5. Next, repeat step #2 and step #3, but this time use a 60 grit sanding belt and disk.  
6. Next, fill in any gaps between the blocks with epoxy resin.  A good tip is to mix the resin filler with the residual dust from the previous sanding processes to form a paste.  Leave the filler to dry completely.  
7. When the floor is dry, use your belt floor sander fitted with a 100 grit sanding belt and make a pass over the floor as per step #2, step #3, and step #4.  Your aim here is to get rid of any bits of protruding filler so that you're left with a smooth floor.  You'll need to finish off the corners of the floor that the sander won't reach by hand.  
8. Your final job is to buff the floor using a 120 grit sanding screed disk.  This process should remove any remaining scratches and imperfections that have been left following the previous processes.  Once again, use the technique described above.  
9. Finally, vacuum the floor to remove any traces of dust and grains of dirt so that it is completely clean and ready for sealing and finishing.

In conclusion

There's a definite technique to sanding a parquet floor.  Although this can be a little more time-consuming than working on a plank floor, the end result will be well-worth the extra effort.