[speeder]

It does present a challenge covering freshly refinished floors but my preferred strategy is to sand floors first, cover them with construction paper and/or drop cloths, paint and then put the varnish or other coating on the floors last. If you accidentally get a drop or two of paint on the raw wood, it’s not a big deal to clean it up and sand that spot if necessary.

This way, you put the finish on the floors last and no one needs to step on them again before they are fully cured. When they dry, the room is finished. I’ve seen it done the other way and it’s a disaster. I used to be a painter and people would be calling me to repaint the walls again because the floor job ruined them.

Think of it this way….would you paint a valuable car and then immediately sand some other part of the car next to the fresh paint?? When you paint something, you don’t want anything messing with fresh paint.