Lots of repairs

Q: My newly uncovered 125 year old 5/4 inch pine plank floors have some high and low undulations. Also,clearly someone used a sander on the floor and removed some but not all the paint before putting on a linoleum floor. There are many random spots with some paint that remains.

One contractor told me he had to do the whole floor by hand to remove the paint and to avoid sanding off too much of the surface to flatten the floor. I wondered why an orbital could not be used instead of hand work. I guess it could be if done non aggressively applied. Correct? How would you attack such a floor? Would a floor sander really remove all the “character” from such a floor. What about replacing some missing 5/4 planks with 3/4 inch planks that are shimmed up, or faced on the bottom with a half inch board?

A: I would sand the floors with my professional sanding equipment and dust containment, especially when removing paint and any old finish. A lot of this dust is quite toxic. Would it remove all the character marks? What do you consider character marks? It won’t make the floors look white or light yellow like new pine.

Your repair should work as long as the surface down to the top of the groove is the same. This is tongue and groove, isn’t it? or is it just solid planks? Tough to match colour wise.