Using Shellac or Varnish on an Old Pine Floor
liriodendron
14 years ago
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macv
14 years agoRelated Discussions
Finishing old pine floor with tung oil or danish oil?
Comments (2)I have used penetrating oil finishes on floors. Waterlox and VelvetOil are two of the easiest to find ones. Pay VERY careful attention to the surface prep and application methods ... the first coat is critical for deep penetration. I'll be using Waterlox in a hallway next year, which should test it's durability to the maximum....See Morerestoring old shellac interior wood trim
Comments (7)Casey, Are you sure you're correct? I would be so happy to find you are right and I was wrong because I do a lot of work with grain alcohol (book restoration/conservation) and I have been taking a great deal of trouble with all those alcohol-soaked wiping cloths. Would the denatured alcohol used for stripping act differently than grain alcohol? I would be delighted to hear I can safely dispose of them in the trash! I actually meant to come back here and re-comment because of something I thought of today. The OP didn't say so, but in my house I have shellac over varnish grain-painting (in turn over an oil-based paint foundation). In some places the top coat has darkened and alligatored so as to make it not very pretty, but I know what's underneath it and am leaving it, for now. So a suggestion to the OP, make sure you don't have grain painting underneath. You can remove the alligatored top layer but it is a much more delicate job than just cleaning plain shellac if you want to retain this special decorative feature. Molly~...See MorePine doors: shellac vs wiping varnish?
Comments (5)I'm guessing what handymac means by "real varnish" is non-polyurethane varnish. Here are some options: - Sherwin-Williams Wood Classics FastDry Oil Varnish(they make a number of polys, but this is not one of them) - Cabot 8000 series (the final number indicates the sheen). I can get this at my local hardware store, sometimes by free "ship-to-store." Previously, this product was McCloskey's Heirloom and was re-branded a year or two ago. - Waterlox Original (this is a darker amber due to its different oil and resin base) - Pratt & Lambert #38 And realize, whatever the label says, if it's waterborne, it's largely an acrylic finish. It's not necessarily a bad thing, just different properties than oil-based and polyurethanes....See MoreHow to refinish 160 year old pine floors
Comments (4)Looks like a soft pine (white pine or spruce) therefore getting a commercial drum sander to remove the paint is going to remove a lot of material in a hurry. Then applying a finish like polyurethane, which can only be removed by sanding (again) locks you into a cycle wherein your historic material is carted to the landfill as dust in garbage bags. Within a few cycles, the flooring will be abraded down to the t&g, and effectively ruined. The good new as I see it is that these floors have not been previously sanded, as they apparently been covered with area rugs and a painted border (a very typical treatment in the 19th century). There's no reason why you couldn't repeat this, and choose your personal floor paint color, and use a Persian (or a modern rug) of an appropriate size. It would look 100% authentic. There is an issue of which I must make you aware. Those never-painted central patches are never going to match the wood underneath the painted borders if both of them are stripped down. The bare patches have 160 years more oxidation head start, and will be darker when varnished. Artful (painfully so) staining work can diminish the differences a great deal, as will a flat finish, but this is really an art, and a historic floor specialist (or experienced, determined homeowner who's good at wood finishing, or gets ones self to that point) would need to take charge. We hand scrape old/historic floors where there is high regard for them or they are nearing the point where the t&g will become exposed. Our hand scraping bears no relationship to the current factory process of intentionally putting scraper tracks into material for the sake of added texture. We are scraping to have total control inch by inch over how much material gets removed, where; to keep material removal to the minimum level to render the floorboards smooth and finish-ready. The scraper gives complete control and can leave an even layer of oxidised wood (patina) that a power-sanding would render very much flatter, but with infinitely varying degrees of patina. With a cupped board, fo instance, a sander will sand the cupping completely out, in the process removing less material at the center (low point of the cup) and greatly more material at the edges, rendering two lighter stripes and a darker center. On wide pine boards this is very pronounced. This is too long, sorry, here is a pic of one of our scraped-process floors, of wide heart pine, where there had been very bad weathered. sun-faded patches in line with the window, and the 14-16" wide boards would not have withstood drum sanding. Casey...See Morekterlep
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