Forget about polyurethane… Mary Ann wants wax, maybe.
We should have the floor nailed down by Monday. Its cypress, by the way, just like the siding and interior paneling and trim, because Mary Ann is married to lumber dealer who pushes cypress. She teaches yoga and the building is her new and improved Yoga Palace. So almost all the traffic there will be barefoot.
Anyway, we’ve been discussing floor finishes and wax keeps popping up. So far The Wood Floor Doctor has failed me and Google hasn’t churned up anything beyond the bare outlines of what I need to know about putting a wax finish on a new wood floor.
Help!
Replies
Use oil modified poly then you won't have to maintain the wax.
Jeff
LOL. That was helpful.
J. D. ReynoldsHome Improvements
apply old fashioned tung oil, buff, repeat. i was in a redone kitchen where the owner had done a beautiful job on a new wood floor with it. easy maintenance too.
More than likely, Mary Ann wants a natural looking/feeling floor. She probably equates polyurethane with a shiny plastic surface. Are you sanding the floor after it's down? For any site applied finish, it's important that the surface be sanded to remove mill scale. A wax finish on a floor is a lot of work that has to be renewed regularly. It may even involve using wax stripper in the future. Most floor waxes contain many nasty chemicals. There are green versions if you seek them out. A bare surface is going to absorb a lot of wax. Buffing it out to get a protective, attractive finish won't be easy. The odor/off gassing will last a long time. The wax doesn't offer a high level of protection or long service.
There are some great waterborne floor finishes. Eco and people friendly, easy to clean and maintain, quick application. Something like Street Shoe is a 1 part finish that is available in several sheens. A matte or flat sheen would make the floor look like bare wood without the drawbacks. Easy for you and perfect for a yoga studio. There are other manufacturers of similar products but this is the only one I know that comes in flat sheen.
http://www.walkonwood.com/details.asp?key=11044
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
Done thousands of them. Never liked them though because of maintenance. Beautiful when done but a month later the maintenance starts.
Sand the floor, finishing up with 80 grit. Apply a coat of Watco Danish Oil or any other genuine floor sealer that you may prefer. When dry apply a good paste wax of your choice and buff with a buffer to a sheen. Two applications of wax are better and more buffing. Best to own the buffer.
Perhaps in a room without furniture it would make sense. If it was mine I'd apply urethane over the watco and never do any maintenance other than spongeing up messes and vacuuming.----Mesic
Thanks to everyone. I’m a trim guy but I’m trying real hard to care about floor finishing because I like these people. We actually built another all cypress 700 sq. foot house for the sister in law on the family compound last year. We finished the floor with polyurethane and its doing OK. Other than that I would rank cypress as one of the most inappropriate woods to do a floor with. But I’m not the guy with the money.
I didn’t want to overload my initial post but maybe I should have. Mary Ann told her people they would be back in by 1/15/08. To do that we had to focus on finishing the interior and break off on everything else. That means the board and batten siding goes without battens for now. There’s no insulation under the floor and they’re heating with 1500 watt space heaters that they have. We can install the real system later on between classes.
Polyurethane would work but the floor is too cold. Tung oil would work but the fumes would be too persistent to get going by the fifteenth.
Right now I think we should sand the floor and apply a sealer, then re-sand and put the finish on in late spring.
So can anyone recommend a sealer, etc?
re the tung oil smell, get a couple of box fans in there and keep them running on high constantly. you don't necessarily need open windows to relieve the smell, just move the air around during the curing time and this greatly helps.
wnats wax maybe huh?
I'm guessing what she wants is a 'natural' finish.
But if this is for a Yogi, that implies other people will be coming in to walk on it. She wants to check her insuarance policy and have some splints on hand for setting broken bones naturally too. People have 'evolved' to the point they can no longer walk on waxed floors without falling.
Another potential problem is that Cypress is hairy and splintery. not especially friendly for bare feet. I would want two things in finishing such a floor. One is to sand it very well first. The other is some finish to seal the fibres in and together.
For natural finishes other than wax, there is shellac or an oil like Waterlox.
She can always wax on top of that if she wants, but floor waxes have chemicals to thin it for application. I would not think of those as 'natural' or friendly for a yogi to rub butt on.
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What piffin said. Waterlox is good at binding up splintery stuff and comes in a satin version if you want less gloss. There are several good things about waterlox. It's catalyzed tung-oil, dries pretty quickly, cures fully in a week or so. It's flexible. When you ding a less-than-hard wood floor, the finish doesn't chip. It has a beautiful (to my eyes) amber cast to it. No need to even sand (for adhesion anyway, appearance is another matter) between coats or even years later when re-coating. When it starts to get a little worn you can just put more on. There are several bad things about waterlox. It takes many coats to build a uniform sheen...usually four coats on hardwood, up to seven coats for old dry softwood. I would guess 4-5 for cypress. For best results it helps to buff it out a bit for the last couple of coats.WAX AND WATERLOX DON"T MIX. Wax will prevent waterlox from curing properly, so if you wax a waterloxed floor, then want to re-coat with waterlox at a later date you have be sure to strip all the wax completely off. I learned this one the hard way. Had a floor stay tacky for a week before it finally set up. The rep said I hadn't gotten the wax off completely enough. If it didn't set up within a week it wasn't ever going to set up. Luckily if finally did set up.Steve
The thing with Waterlox is that it is slow curing, and that EACH coat must cure fully before doing the next or you end up with a soft gummy finish, so it is a slow process for a modern job on deadlines.but for this customer, I am thinking it is the best way to satisfy her little idiosyncrasies.
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Hey h
I went to a yoga center in Greece with a pine floor, they had finished it with......guess what? Olive oil. Yes it will work, smells like a kitchen, maybe will need many recoats. It did not seem to be going rancid at the time but the climate there is dry and cool.....
I don't recommend olive but other oils will work to seal. Mineral oil and then beeswax. I use that alot in woodturning for eating utensils and bowls. I would take some scraps and try a few oils and waxes. and see how they look after a few days.
Watco oil is good but takes awhile to dry. Waterlox is a pain and doesn't hold up very well.
Good luck, thought I would throw in my two bits....
Nuvue