I followed the instructions on the video I posted in my previous post and it really was that simple to remove that cap from the Swiffer WetJet bottle.  I didn’t need to break off the little prongs that stick out (recommended on a link I gave in my previous post) because when it was heated and I turned  the cap it bent them down enough that I can screw the lid back on and remove it without having to reheat it in boiling water.

So, now I need to make the solution that is recommended on the Waterlox website (Waterlox is an tung oil-based floor finish.) I’m using the vinegar and water so I don’t have to over pay for their pricey cleaner.  The instructions said: “A damp mop with a maximum mixture of 1 – 2 oz. of white vinegar to 2 gallons of warm water”

The WetJet bottle looks to be close to a quart. I’ll use the 2 ounces per 2 gallon suggestion and reduce it down to quart size.  One ounce per one gallon.  One fluid ounce is 6 teaspoons.   So that is 6 tsp per gallon.  Divide by 4 (qts per gallon) and you get 1 1/2 teaspoons of vinegar per quart of water (the max amount of vinegar they say to use or less.)  Vinegar is one of the cheapest things to buy and you use so little you can imagine how much money you will save not buying the Swiffer WetJet bottles.

Waterlox says you can use Murphy’s Oil Soap but says it leaves a residue that dulls the finish somewhat and that would have to be removed whenever you want to recoat the floor with more Waterlox in the future.  That might be a good way to dull a finish down that you think is too shiny.  Just a thought.

I’m glad to be able to refill the bottles.  Now if there was a cheaper pad that goes with the Swiffer WetJet.

This past weekend we spent part of the time getting ready for winter. I sneer at people that say they like winter around here. They are only fooling themselves. It is their way to cope in order to get through this cruel, icy time of year. Let them. I see it for what it is, confinement in a freezer.

My husband brought down the storm windows. He checked them over and cleaned them and the glass inside and out. He told me the paint was good but next year we are going to have to reglaze them. Ugh! Well, that’s next year. So I was spared having to paint them before they were put up. I’ll use that white latex foam spray insulation (Dap Tex, I think) around the inside of the storm windows. It brushes away with a stiff brush and I just vacuum it up when we remove the windows in the spring.

I also sanded our 6 ft high cedar gate I made several years ago. It still in great shape except the spar varnish peels up every year. It makes me mad that I go through the effort only to have it fail. Last year I did an experiment with leftover Waterlox. I coated the south/west side of the gate with Waterlox before winter. It looked really pretty. Waterlox makes a marine product meant for outdoors but this is what I had leftover (the original finish for floors, woodwork and furniture) so I thought I’d try it. This Waterlox didn’t have UV filters etc in it. The sun’s UV rays penetrates through the finish and breaks down the bond between the wood and the finish. However, I did add some gel stain (oil based) to the mix which turned it a nice orangy-cedar color. The gate looked terrific in the spring after surviving temperatures down to zero and snow for months on end. The east side of the gate I used the spar varnish like always. The east side is the protected side as wind, rain and snow usually hit the west side. Both sides looked pretty good but the east side was starting to have small slits appearing in the finish.

I knew summer would be the real test. That humidity and rain coupled with the heat and strong sun rays would do the finish in I was sure. But the Waterlox side survived with very little damage, just a few tiny breaks in the finish. and it was on the side that has most of the hot sun and rain. The other side I had to scrape and sand to get all the peeling finish (peeling like a bad sunburn) off which is what I always have to do every year because that stuff just doesn’t last. This past weekend I put Waterlox mixed with the antique maple, oil-based gel stain on that side of the gate, too, after sanding off the peeling areas of spar varnish. I’ll need to put on 2 more coats to build up the finish and even out the color. The side that got the coating of Waterlox the year before just needed a light, thinned-down coat. The great part is you don’t have to sand between coats of Waterlox (each coat melts into the previous not like spar varnish that you have to scratch the surface for it to bond.)

My thought is that the oil-based Gel Stain I added to the Waterlox has solids in it that perhaps filtered some of the UV rays out. Whatever, it worked good. Even if I have to lightly re-coat it every year, I had to do it anyway and I wouldn’t have to sand it all down to re-coat it like I do with spar varnish. That is huge. Of course I’m putting Waterlox over some areas that still have some spar varnish so it is only going to hold as long as that under coat lasts. So now I’m thinking that next year I will buy some of the marine Waterlox made to withstand the outdoor weather and sun. It so expensive but if it lasts, it would be worth it. The industry just doesn’t make a product that lasts. The sun is a mean enemy of finishes. Even paint only lasts a few years before you have to start repainting. I guess they’d put themselves out of business if you didn’t have to keep going back to buy their products every year. So, like congressmen voting for term limits, it’s never going to happen.

We got the living-room floor finished last New Years (there abouts) and I finally got to the dining-room floor and finished the second half of it just before we left for our vacation.  It had been over 10 days since I put the top coat on before we left so we could have put the furniture back but decided to wait and let it cure a couple of more weeks while we were gone.

One of the first things I noticed when I came through the door when returning home was the shine difference between the two halves of the floor.  I used Waterlox Original and it dulls a good bit as it cures.  It always starts out looking really shiny but then it cures to a medium sheen in about 2 weeks.  It should be almost completely cured by now but the shine is way too shiny.  The last coat of the one side had come from a new gallon I opened. I’m a bit depressed as I took such care putting on that last top coat.  I’m going to have to put another top coat from that same gallon on the other half of the floor to be sure they match.  It is extra work and requires moving all that furniture again.  I think I’ll contact the company and ask “what’s up with that?!”

I’m currently involved with 3 projects at once.  Multitasking.  When my back hurts from one, I move to the other. The weather turned wonderful.  Low 70s is my kind of temperature and makes me want to work.  I put on my earphones and turn on the audio book and I’m in my own little world.

I finally got around to putting the Waterlox on the dining-room floor (I did the living-room floor back in Dec/Jan.)  I am using the same method I used with the living room.  I put painters tape along the boards to divide the room in half and moved all the furniture to one side.  When the finished side is cured, I’ll move the furniture back to the other side and finish the remaining floor.  It looks good so far.  It will have to cure for 7-10 days before I can start on the other side. (photos to come soon.)

In the meantime I am stripping the back stairs that leads from the kitchen to the upstairs landing.  I haven’t decided what finish to use yet.  The oak front stairs was just completed in the garnet shellac but the pine back stairs borders the kitchen with the natural heart pine woodwork so I may leave those stairs a natural color, too.  I’ll just use Waterlox if I do.  I’m only halfway done with the stripping of the back stairs. I tried both the strong chemical stripper and the Peel Away 6.  Both are so messy. The chemical is so much faster but requires thick gloves and being really careful. Even a little splatter will burn your skin.  Of the parts I have already stripped, the chemical cleaned it best. The downside to the chemical stripper is I can’t leave for a moment in case one of the cats happens down the stairs. Another question I have to answer is if I want to sand out all the marks and dents on the treads.  It’s part of the allure of “antique.”  Some of the treads are worn down in the middle from a century of use.  It would be nice to have the stairs look spanking new but I love the history in the old look. I think the sanding will be minimal. It is what it is, old stairs.  People often try to make their new wood look old like this.

My husband and I bought the paint for our kitchen.  It has been on our list since we bought the house but we just never got to it.  It’s not all that big of a project so why live with ugly dirty, green walls and a green ceiling?  Yesterday we said, “Let’s just do it.”  The worst part will be cleaning those old high ceilings and repairing the cracks.  My neck hates that stuff. It’s the pits to be short and everything seems harder when you are short.   My husband volunteered to do the ceiling. I say, “Have at it!”  We picked a light pale yellow.  It looked pretty light at the store but I knew through past experience how yellow yellow can be when it is up on the wall.  I have the paint sample card up on the wall this morning and I think we picked the perfect color.  We haven’t found a lighting fixture yet that we like for the kitchen.  I’ll keep my eyes open on eBay to try to find a restored vintage lighting fixture that will look right in our kitchen and doesn’t cost a fortune. There is also a foot-square grate near the ceiling.  We want to take that down and see what the original color was.  It is painted green like the walls  now.  I think it would look really nice black and I have a feeling that is the original color.

I’m done refinishing the baseboards for the living room.  It was a really big job.  To get the right color took about 10 coats of garnet shellac with a lot of sanding back to get the grain right.  But that’s done now.  I have boards laying on the floor, on top of furniture, boards everywhere!  Now that they have had about a minimum of 2 weeks to dry, I am rubbing them out with black wax.  I bought some Satin Waterlox that I was going to use but it looked streaky no matter how much I stirred it. There were subtle dull streaks from brush marks even after it leveled out and dried.  It’s clear but the stuff in the product to make it satin (silica, I believe) doesn’t stay mixed. It would probably be fine for chairs and floors but a wide, long expanse of the baseboard shows everything. Instead, I’m putting on black wax with 0000 steel wool. The black wax looks really good and cuts the shine to a pretty satin finish because of the fine scratch pattern of the really, really fine steel wool.  Lots of elbow grease, though, but this should be the last time in my lifetime that I’ll have to do anything to them other than touch up wax. I don’t know what ingredient in the black wax smells really good but it is wonderful.

I’ll be insulating the areas where the outlets come through the walls with fiberglass insulation stuffed back in there and I’ll be sealing any gaps in the boards where the floor and wall meet.  That’s going to take some time. 

*UPDATE (see photo below)
The baseboards are back up on the walls in the living room. I just tacked them in place for now because I’ll be painting this room a neutral beige color when I finish the dining room and it would be easier to take them off to paint rather than tape it all off and then permanently put them back up. The outlets got well insulated. Before, a lot of air was coming through and now I don’t feel any. I also added the latex white foam (DAP) around the edges where the floor boards meet the wall. There were some gaps there. When it was dried, I trimmed the foam level with the floor and wall where the foam expanded too much. With the help of my husband we got the baseboards back up and the outlets installed and the room looks so much more finished with the baseboards installed. It’s great to have the furniture back in the places they belong.

NEXT:
I have to cut the nails off and refinish the quarter-round moldings that go on the floor up against the baseboards to complete the finished look. I’m also going to be working on adding another couple of coats of garnet shellac to the inside sideboards of the stairs to darken them to match the baseboards and then scrape off the finish on the treads. I want the treads the same clear finish as I have on the floor. I think it will be just enough contrast to look good and the lighter color will show the dust less. The dark color on the treads now really shows even the smallest of dust. The photo looks the same as the other ones I have posted? No! Look! The baseboards are up!

So far I’m a bit disappointed. I mail ordered the Timbermate Wood Filler because it sure looked like it worked really well in the YouTube commercials. It’s water based and no waste as you can add water to the sanded off powder and reuse it.

I first tried it on about a 6 ft piece of 8-inch wide, old-growth white oak baseboard.

I diluted it down to the consistency of thick paint and smeared it on the board. I left it proud of the surface so I could sand it down flat and smooth. When it dried I started sanding it off with 120 sandpaper. The directions said not to use coarser than that. It sanded pretty easily and turned into a powder like corn starch. You can save the powder and add it back to the bucket and reuse it. It sanded off nice and smooth. Then I brushed on my first coat of garnet shellac. The white-oak colored Timbermate took on the color of the garnet shellac and looked good. But the grain and ridges still started to build like it does when I don’t use wood filler. You can really see it in the raking light.

Shellac has that tendency to “pucker” up along the ridge lines because of the surface tension of the quick evaporation of the alcohol in it. I ended up having to do just as much sanding and rubbing back as I normally do. Maybe I sanded it down too far.

In the next try I made the mixture a little thicker and this time I sanded it off using 320 sandpaper and didn’t sand down all the way down to the wood. I could see the grain but I didn’t feel the grain. It took a lot longer to sand with the 320 sandpaper. I thought that would work better than my first try. It did, but I still didn’t get that nice smooth surface you see on the commercials. I think perhaps it was because of the nature of shellac. I did get my final smooth surface with no grain showing with less rubbing out. I guess I was looking for miracles.

I have more baseboards to do. My next try will be to put Waterlox Original on top of the grain filler as a first coat and let it dry overnight. Maybe if I can keep the the shellac from soaking into the grain filler, it won’t pucker up on the ridges. I’ll let you know how that works.

Thursday: Feb 12, 2010

I’m having a heck of a time refinishing the woodwork in my house because it is oak with deep grain and pore patterns. Either you have to use a grain filler or you have to put on lots of coats of shellac and sand it back until the pores are filled or it looks really cheap. I’ve been doing the latter. It’s been a battle on all the window woodwork, the colonnade, and the stairs. I tried grain filler before and it was so much more work because it dried like cement. I even tried using a watered-down plaster mix for the filler but it didn’t take the stain well and the one window has a “pickled” look to the grain. It would work well for something painted that needed the grain to be filled and it certainly was cheap! I’ll have to redo that one at some point because it isn’t painted.

I saw a commercial for Timbermate on YouTube and ordered some. It came yesterday and was frozen solid and hidden in a snow drift that developed on my porch. I didn’t hear the doorbell ring. But right on the package it says it is not affected by being frozen, thank goodness. Hopefully I’ll get to another of the baseboards this weekend so I can try it out. I’m moving right along on my projects but at a snail’s pace.

I also received my quart of satin Waterlox so I can top coat my baseboards to cut the (garnet dewaxed shellac) shine to a satin finish. I have “Shellac Flat” but I like the way Waterlox dries so slowly and evenly for my top coat plus the extra protection it will give for spills and other accidents that may happen (we have cats.)

Hopefully soon, I’ll have some photos to show you how good it turned out (or not.)

I actually finished the living room floor on New Years Eve day. But then I noticed some cat hairs stuck into the finish here and there and here I spent so much time vacuuming, swiffering and taking a tack cloth to the whole area immediately before putting on the finish. Even though the three cats were locked out of the room, their fuzzy little hairs float in the air when they shake or move and drifted through the air onto my floor with the heated air flow.

I contacted Waterlox to see what would be the best way to attempt a removal of the cat hair. Their response was to:
Do nothing. They have a way of working themselves out. Or take a razor blade and carefully remove it and using a Q-tip apply finish over that little area. They recommended against sanding the hair out and re-coating over the sanded area because there may be blending problems.

I tried the razor blade on one of the hairs and made things worse. I didn’t want to just leave it and hope it “wears” off. I went against the recommendation and used sandpaper. First I used 1500 grit (auto) wet/dry but it wasn’t aggressive enough to get the hair up. I then went with 320 and carefully sanded the hair until it was gone. I went over it with 800 and 1500 sandpaper to try and blend the area. After cleaning the spots with mineral spirits and wiping dry, I re-coated the spots using a little sponge brush. I rubbed with a clean, lint free sock around the edges to try and feather it. Because it takes so long to dry, it levels itself out pretty good.

The following day I could not see the repair. If you have a floor that is so flat and perfect and glass-like, maybe a repair would show but with the large amount of grain in oak, I can’t tell. I went on to find some more hairs and a little piece of grit here and there and fixed them. Once in a while I had to add a second coat the next day over the area that was repaired because I got a bit aggressive on some hairs that were deeper into the finish. It was pretty easy but did take some time because it takes so long to dry. Really, I couldn’t even see the hairs unless I was standing just so and the light was shining just so but I figured it would bother me knowing it was there so I fixed it. It’s good to know that if the cats do scratch the finish or if I find something on the floor that needs repairing that I hadn’t noticed before, that it is easy to fix.

Now it’s time to tackle the rest of the baseboards from that room.

I spent New Years Eve day putting the 3rd coat of Waterlox on the second half of the living room floor. I changed over from the lambswool applicator to a short-napped paint roller. It had been used and washed before and most of the loose fuzz was gone. To be sure, I vacuumed it. I found that the lambswool applicator soaked up too much of the finish and I wasted so much during the clean-up. The roller put on a really nice even coat. I was a little worried about all the bubbles that it made on the surface, though. I kept watching it and they slowly, over a couple of hours, went away and the finish leveled out before it turned tacky which took longer than normal because of the cold weather. The roller was easy to scrape the excess finish from and I saved it in a jar for the chairs I’m working on.

I have 3 of the baseboards completed with finish. I added some Shellac Flat to the last 3 coats to give it a satin sheen. After a week, I’ll take some steel wool and give it a layer of paste wax to finish it off.

After the 4th coat of the living room floor I’m taking a week or two off of working on the house to get my back and knees rested (they hurt!) before attacking the dining room. We went to see Avatar for New Years Eve and I had to limp in.

The part of last week that didn’t have anything to do with Thanksgiving involved some edge sanding of the floors. At this rate I will only have the one room’s floor finished by Christmas. OK then, that is my goal. Then I’ll take as long as it takes to get the other one done.

I’m limited to how long I can be on the floor sanding so I continued on my half-done project of the 2 dining-room chairs to change things up a bit. These chairs are Heywood Bros and Wakefield from around 1910. So far I have dyed both chairs with water-based medium fumed-oak dye. I made it kind of weak and put on 3 coats. I wanted it pretty dark to match the dining-room table. In the photo I started putting Waterlox on the chairs. This photo shows how much the color changes when you add the clear coat. However, the dyed chair looked that color when it was wet after dyeing it so I knew what color it was going to be. The brown is much too transparent to match my arts and crafts-era table. I may have to add some coats of garnet shellac when the Waterlox is cured to get it to match. The following photo shows one of the chairs that have been stripped, sanded, dyed and then adding the first coat of Waterlox.

I’ll be working on the chairs off and on for the next week or so.

My thoughts had turned to what we were going to do with our 3 cats when we apply Waterlox to the floor and I remembered the door we found in the attic of the garage several months after we moved in. Our kitchen doorway into the dining room had some brass hardware on the top of the door jamb and when we pulled up the carpet in the dining room it exposed screw holes on the floor by the door jamb. I assumed the door in the garage was one of those cafe doors that swing in both direction. We also have a pocket door in the kitchen that leads to the back stairs( that shares the main stair landing) that we got working again and with the cafe door we could shut the kitchen (and basement kitty door) off from the rest of the house. That would be a perfect solution to the cat problem for when the finish is wet on the floor.

This was the hardware I have wondered about for 10 years that we spotted on the top of the kitchen door jamb.

Saturday, I asked my husband if he would bring down that door and we could see if it would fit. I didn’t realize how heavy it was! He leaned it up against the kitchen wall and we looked it over. One side had an almost perfect finish after all these years. On the other side the finish is awful. It will have to be refinished but not now. What I needed now was a door to block the rooms off. The huge bottom hinge was still on the door which was a relief. It seemed like we could just tilt it up and screw it down but it wasn’t so easy. For one thing the kitchen carpet put in by the previous owner was installed on top of some linoleum that was on top of some 3/8 inch particle board which covered part of the area the floor hinge needed to go. We chiseled and sawed and scraped and cut part of the kitchen carpet to make room for the door. The door was only going to be able to swing in one direction because of the higher floor in the kitchen. That was OK, as long as it shut. Below are some photos of what we came across when we took the threshold off. Lots of dirt for one thing, a hundred years of grit.

The bottom hinge doesn’t look very good and it doesn’t appear to be the original. That will probably be replaced when I refinish the door in the future. The part we see is just a cover so maybe it can be taken off and polished up with a dremel or even painted.

We cut away until we exposed the whole area where the bottom hinge was mounted originally. The door would butt right up against the higher floor of the kitchen so we decided to cut it all back to the edge of the kitchen door jamb.

Cut back rug and particle board and I had to cut a 3/8 plywood spacer under the hinge to make the door high enough so it would stay in position. The protruding metal on the top door jamb fits down inside a metal hole on the top of the door and without the spacer the door kept falling out. I screwed down the piece I cut onto the floor with two screws in the top and bottom centered and then we screwed the door hinge onto that with 2-inch deck screws and it was solid.

After sanding the floor clean you can see the oak boards from the dining room and the yellow pine of the kitchen. There are plenty of nail holes to fill, too. A future project is to remove the rug, tiles and particle board in the kitchen and hopefully the heart pine that is there will be in good condition.

The finish on the good side.

The finish on the bad side. That will have to get refinished soon as it is terrible.

And this is the door installed. This is actually the side with the bad finish but far away you can’t see it.

It really felt good to have that door installed. It turned out to be a big project but I’m thrilled to finally have it up. The fact that it only swings one way is a headache. I, knowing it only swings one way, have already banged into it trying to go the other direction. Well, it stays open at 90 degrees with the spring catch in the hinge and I’ll only shut it when necessary. It also may speed me up to getting the kitchen carpet removed so the door can swing in both directions.