About

Hello,

Ben Osborne here! I am the founder and CEO of HowToSandAFloor.com and its parent company Be Abrasive Limited.

I created How to Sand a Floor (.com) to help homeowners sand and refinish their own floors. 

HowToSandAFloor.com has been live since 2013. It has gone through many changes and additions since its inception and we continue to grow!

I have been sanding floors since October 2004 at the ripe old age of 17 years old. It was a bumpy ride at first. It’s ok to start out with no knowledge or experience, but really you need to be taught by someone with knowledge and experience. I didn’t have that. We made every mistake there was to make.

Eventually, we got some advice from someone with some real experience in the game. He had 12 years of experience. The advice he gave us was how to sand parquet flooring. As it turns out, the advice he gave us was incorrect, but he did give me one piece of advice that has stood the test of time. That advice was that “you will never stop learning in this industry.” 

My oh my, has that been true!

The founding of HowToSandAFloor.com

I started HowToSandAFloor.com in March 2013. Time flies!

It started with just a rudimentary site with some articles and information on floor sanding. Later that year, I uploaded my first YouTube video. That video absolutely took off and is sitting at around 2.5 million views! It still gets thousands of views every day.

Good quality information was hard to come by in this industry.

Our mission is to educate

My interactions with other professionals, as and when I met them, led me to realize that it’s an industry with no consensus on correct methods of sanding. “whatever works for you” is an expression I have heard far too many times. There is a correct way, I’m sure of it.

As we move into the 21st century, with the advent of the internet, much more discussion is being had and the quality of sanding refinishing, in general, has improved significantly. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still companies out there that do really bad work!

There are also a lot of experienced people that do things in a sub-par fashion. You can usually recognize them by their catchphrase; “I’ve been in this game for 30 (or 40) years!”

I’m not just saying this to moan. This is a huge part of the reason for and mission of this website. To dispel the myths around floor sanding and refinishing.

You see, if the trade often doesn’t know how to do it right, how can the general public? And yet the majority of the advice you can find on the internet and on YouTube is from the general public that has just sanded their floors once!

We have all heard the expression, “free advice is seldom cheap.” Never before, have I been so convinced of this wisdom.

Our promise

None of this means that I am the most knowledgeable or have some sort of authority on the subject. There are many people I know that would fit that bill better than I.

However, I promise to deliver the best information to the best of my knowledge! This means that the information has changed and will continue to change as I understand things better. I have plenty of input, too! With my youtube channel and website, I’m pretty sure no one gets more criticism on their floor sanding technique than me.

Sometimes that critique can be very valuable and I take it on board.

This website gives professional advice to the amateur floor sander. Contrary to popular belief, floor sanding is a very high-touch process, it’s an art. It is not as easy as laying tiles or building flat-pack furniture. This website gives all the information you need to make sure you are making the most of your hardwood floor refinishing project.

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