Shellacking is done

Well I finished shellacking the floors and they came out very nice. Even though the new wood and old wood don't match, I'm not going to cry over it. Now I have to wait to put down the poly, which I will probably do next weekend when I can get some from my local paint store.

Question: what brands of poly have people used? And how good were they?

Before:










After:

Shellacking the final upstairs bedroom

Well yesterday I was removing the flooring from the downstairs room and today I am shellacking the last upstairs room. I know I know, I never finish what I start, but I'm the type of renovator that likes to do a little here and a little there. I know there are some of you like that out there, I read your blogs. Anyways I finished sanding the floors with a palm sander, vacuumed and cleaned the area as good as possible and started to put shellac on the baby room floor. Did I saw baby room.... YES! I am going to be a daddy in 7-8 months. So I need to finish this room as fast as possible. I know I haven't blogged in like ages and now all of a sudden I am a soon to be dad and blogging away. I guess that is how it works sometimes. But here are some pictures of the shellac on wood.

You can kind of see in the picture that part of the floor has a different tone. That is where the previous owners put down new pine next to the old. As you can tell they don't match up very well, but I am going to see if a few more coats of shellac might blend it in better. Then after that I will poly over it. I know most poeple don't like poly, but my wife insists that it have poly on it this time. So whatever wife says, I do. While this waits to dry I will be making more shellac.

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.

Question about wood floor refinishing... Damn animals!

Well I have decided that moving into the master bedroom is a must now. We have lived in the small guest bedroom ever since we moved into our house. The room is painted and livable, but the question I have is, "What should I cover my floors with?". I know a lot of people would sugguest polyurethane. And I bet that is a good solution, but listen to me first. I have 5 dogs, ranging from 3 tiny chihuahuas and 2 big black labs. They do a number to my floors everyday and with poly I am afraid that I will have to refinish every few year. I know the plus side is that it is very durable, but then the bad is that you can not fix it after it has been damaged. I have read a lot about shellac and have written a few things about it on my blog. The plus is that it is easy to spot repair and dries a lot faster, the bad is that it is easily damaged. I won't even go into the n-th number of other floor finishes either. So if you could please put your input on what I should use. I will take what you say and make my decisions.

Remember: I do have to stay in the house as the floors are being refinished. Please help. Thanks so much.