This involved hitting it with a heavy floor drum sander and a corner edger. Since E and I have done this before (actually, E did), we knew the drill pretty well and had a good sense of the overall scope before we began. We were hoping to do both edging and drum sanding at the same time, but the tools draw too much current for one circuit. We blew a breaker and had to alternate. That worked well enough since it's pretty tiring work and it allowed ample time for breaks.

This room is about 11' x 22' and the helpful clerk at the tool rental section of Home Depot (they're starting to recognize us) thought that we'd need about five belts and discs of the two grits we were going to use (38 and 60). Ideally, you should probably do another grit like 100 afterwards, but we had other plans. We ended up using two of each. That's nice because each drum sheet is about $6 so we got a refund about nearly $72. It's about 3 hours per room per grit.

After sanding with the heavy tools, we gave the floor a light coat of water which raises up the grain and takes away a lot of the dust. Then we went over it with palm sanders and 120 grit to get the surface much smoother.

Finally, four coats of water-based polyurethane. The water based stuff isn't nearly as durable as the oil based equivalent, but it goes on easily and dries pretty quickly. Realistically, you could put down the four coats in one day. We took two so we weren't dedicating our lives to polyurethane. Oh, to put the stuff down, use a roller with the thinnest nap you can find. It takes hardly any time at all.

Here are some pictures of the finished floor and patches.

This is where the chimney was.

This is the front patch near the window.

This is the patch by the door.

Most of the room to give an overall sense.

Of course, this is not the end of it. Still need to put in all the finish carpentry in here (casings, moldings, plinths, rosettes), prime and paint them. Then drapes or blinds, maybe a carpet, closet doors...