There was a guy in the south hills that our neighbors were going to use. He was going to do the whole house and their 13 steps for like 2700 or 3200, somewhere around there.
Here is the thing with the lowes orbitals, the pad prices will kill you. The friends that I have that have tried this on their own and quit part way through have said they ran up hundreds of dollars in pad costs and it was dusty and generally a nightmare. In addition I think you can get a better, smoother floor faster using a drum sander but it’s kind of like using a rotary buffer vs. random orbital. You risk doing a bunch of damage if you are dumb.
I will stick with a drum sander then. I like to think I’m not dumb, but my husband might disagree.
i refinished mine a few years ago. rented the home depot floor random orbital sander and took it down to bare wood. i followed the tool guy’s instructions on the different grit pads (used ~$50-100 in pads) and used Minwax Polyeurethane for floors in semi-gloss (no stain). Floors look brand new a couple years later (we have 2 labs). It required 2 coats, 24 hours between coats and at least 2 days to cure hard enough to walk on. I’d suggest waiting longer to move furniture back into the room for the best result. The hardest thing with the whole project was removing every last particle of dust. Sweep, sweep, vacuum and tack cloth really good before finishing.
So the sander you used wasn’t a drum sander? Is that an oil based polyurethane? I’m hoping ours will hold up as well with three dogs (two of our own and one foster dog that no one wants to adopt).