Happy Thanksgiving with a little bit of shellac pictures

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and gorge yourselves with turkey and stuffing, I know I will but before we do that I have fulfilled my promise in posting some pictures of my floor. Now it only has 3 coats of shellac so far and I am going to put about 5 or 6, so it is not done yet, but you can see what it will look like.


This is during the sanding, I rented the U-sand instead of the drum sander. This made sure there were no gouge marks, but it did take a lot longer to sand. I purposely left dark areas and any character marks in the wood.






This is after a couple passes, for some reason my camera was crappy and didn't want to take any good pictures.








This is with the first coast of shellac. I initially thought I was using a 1 pound cut, but after some calculations I figured out I was using a 1/2 pound cut. No wonder it was so easy and didn't create any lap marks. Anyways again the camera didn't give me a good picture. You can see the hazy spots in the picture, I think the inside lense is dirty somehow and have no idea how to clean that. I might just get a new camera on Friday, which reminds me, if anyone needs an excel spreadsheet of all the deals on Black Friday, let me know.




And here is after the second coat, you can see it is a lot darker. My wife wants it dark, so I will have to do a few coats I'm sure. I let the dogs have a test run on it and after awhile I did see that they would start scratching it up a little, so I took out some shellac and blended it out, but because I used such a thin cut of shellac, it couldn't protect the actual wood and I saw where there was a claw mark in the wood that I couldn't take out. The scratch was gone, but the dent wasn't, So it looks like a few more thicker coats should help.

I'm a SHELLAC MANIAC!

Well this past Saturday I went to Home Depot and rented the U-Sand. I decided on this instead of the drum sander, because it would be more forgiving and I wouldn't have the chance of destroying my floors. The U-Sand was pretty straight forward it had 4 orbital sanders on the bottom (which you have to replace each sandpaper with) and you just push it and pull it. It was very easy, but took a lot longer then the drum sander. I needed every bit of the 24 hours to sand my floors. Even then I didn't completely get every area, but it was better than having to use an edger as well. I made sure that I didn't sand away all the marks and dings that made my floors old. So I sanded lightly to get the old shellac off. I will have to post pictures later, but I like the look of the dark edges and the lighter areas in the middle, it kind of kept the antique-ness of the floors. After I finished that I vacuumed like a demon and made sure that there was no dust anywhere.

On Sunday I started my first coat of dark garnet shellac, if you read my previous post then you know I got my shellac from shellackshack. Making the shellac was simple. I had a glass mason jar and put 32 ounces of denatured alcohol I then put in 1/2 cup of shellac. I think this makes it a 1# cut. Either way the shellac dissolved and the jar was totally black, you couldn't see through it at all, I guess that's how I knew that the shellac was indeed dark garnet. So I made a couple batches of that and let it sit a few days (just so you are for certain that everything has dissolved). So on Sunday I tried it out, and boy was I surprised at how it looked. It made the floors glow. My wife wants it darker but I am assuming the more layers I put on the darker it will get. I decided to try a 1 # cut because I heard if you do to high a cut that brush marks would appear easily. The 1# cut worked well and I had no visible lap marks that I could see, so I might had to go up to 1.5 or a 2 # cut and see if I can get it a little darker. Overall I am pleased and hopefully the floors will hold up well. My wife has been beggin me to finish the living room by Christmas, so we could put the tree there instead of on the second floor landing. I guess her wishes have come true. Next floor to shellac will be the master bedroom. I will pot pictures later on how it turned out.

Shellac Shack

I am ready to start finishing my floors in the living room, I hope that this weekend I can rent a U-Sand machine from Home Depot and start sanding the floors. I decided on the U-Sand, because I don't want to loose the character of my floor. I used a drum sander in the master bedroom last year and it basically took everything off the floor, it also created a big mess and I had wooden snot for about a week.

After I have sanded I am going to use shellac on my floors, I know that shellac is real hardy, especially with dogs, but I like the idea of being able to fix any scratches. I bought some shellac from Shellac Shack and I can't rave more about their service (and price). Malcolm will answer all of your questions and the shipping time was awesome. I ordered on Thursday and I got it on Saturday. I still haven't mixed it yet, but the color of the flakes is awesome. I got the garnet and hope that 3 or 4 coats will give me the dark color I want. I will have to upload some pics before and after I am done with it.

Damn you Clearwire!!!

Well, it's been a long time since I last blogged, because my internet service provider, Clearwire, called me up and told me that they were restructuring their service, so I could choose to have this newer service which would be faster. I didn't think about asking them if it would hurt my blog or not. Of course it did. Though I still like the service, since it's a wireless service and I don't need cable or a phone line to connect, but dammit I lost my host. So I have been looking for one for awhile, but will use the blogger service to do my blogging. Oh well, sometimes you win sometimes you don't. Also the service isn't any faster than before.

Hope ya'll had a great Halloween!