Firstly I’d like to thank Stan, Dthodal and Calvin for their input on re-finishing my oak hardwood floors.
Now for the results: I ended up pulling a Don Bollinger (see the FHB video) and went with the drum sander and edger instead of the pad sander (would you believe the little old lady at the Home Depot rental centre talked me into it??!). Aside from some very minor swirl marks left by the edger (a.k.a. ‘Satan’) everything turned out GREAT. The odd chatter mark here and there but my wife couldn’t even point them out (no doubt my buddies will see them within 5 minutes). I did use a Clarke floor polisher however after drum sanding with a 100, 120, 150 grit screen – this really helped get rid of any minor drum marks.
The only real problem I had was with the Varathane water-bourne finish and applicator. It left lots of tiny bubbles in the finish no matter how I applied it. I even talked to the Tech support guy after the 2nd and 3rd coat who recommended I use a very light touch when applying it. Well, no matter how delicate I treated this finicky product, or how well I sanded between coats, the foam backed applicator seemed to cause foaming and left behind bubbles in the dried product, even in the 4th and last coat.
I talked to a customer service person today who offered a free can of the same product and to try the oil based applicator pad instead (woo-hoo, free crap!). Re-sanding, and re-coating plus 3 more days of curing before moving furniture back is unacceptable in my eyes – this has been quite the disruption as is. Fortunately the damn bubbles are invisible to the untrained eye. No doubt all of you out there would point them out at first opportunity 😉
Oh ya, the one other wonderful piece of info I got from the Varathane guy was this: the water-bourne finish is very touchy and difficult to apply. Funny nobody mentioned this to me as I shelled out $50 CDN per can for this gunk.
Hope I’m not rambling…and if you’ve read this far maybe you can give me some feedback on a similar experience. Thanks for listening.
Replies
I had a similar experience with a fir floor that I did last Fall. I used minwax oil-based poly. For me, the bubbles occured at the beginning and end of sweeps, so I modified my application technique to start and stop in an area which would then be gone over again immediately. I also found that the bubbles seemed to be related to the thickness of the coat, so I controlled how much was applied to the floor by pouring out the amount I needed at the beginning, with one half applied at each end of the room that was perpendicular to the board direction about 12" from the baseboard. I'd then run the applicator around the perimeter to get the edges. Then I'd make passes along the length of the boards following a very shallow "U" shaped pattern. The applicator was about 3 boards wide, so I'd go from left to right hitting three boards, then I'd come back from right to left, but shifted over one board. That way each boad was hit three times. As I came to the wall I'd pull the applicator towards me and lift off the floor. Then I'd rotate it 180 degrees, drop it to the floor and sweep back over the area where I'd just lifted the applicator. This way I could correct any bubbles that were left. I'm not sure if this is how a pro would do it, but it seemed to work for me and I'll likely do it the same way on the other three rooms unless someone can convince me otherwise.
Did you apply a sealing coat? I didn't see it mentioned.
Hi there..thanks for the feedback. As for the sealing coat you mentioned, all I put on after sanding was a generous coat which soaked in right away to the 'new wood'. No bubbles that time as the wood was quite porous.
I'm surprised you went to such detail using an oil based product as from everything I've heard - the oil based products self level much better and are much less finicky. But it sounds like you had good results which is more than I had.
I did everything the Flecto (Varathane) people told me to do, so as far as I'm concerned they should stand behind their warranty and offer a refund. The company rep. did mention that perhaps the batch I got missed the anti-foam additive. Who knows.
I still think getting down on my hands and knees and using a synthetic brush type applicator is the way to go. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a brush wider than 4 inches making that choice a poor one.
Ditch gave me as much advice as one could over this forum and emails. It was a steep learning curve, and there are individual situations which require some improvisation. But mostly I just did what I was told.
Just talked to the Varathane people the other day...atleast they were good enough to offer a full refund due to the problems I had. Take care.