First off, I know that maple dosent take stain very well, and I would also say that maple looks very good with a clear poly finish.
However, what are my best options to get a dark color on my 100+ maple floors?
They are in rough shape presently and in need a of few boards replaced. After re configuring our floor plan, I’ll also have to lace in new boards in several places, but Im ready to take one of the final steps in finishing the renovation. I’ll be repairing & sanding approximately 700 sq ft of maple and would like a darker finish than typically used on maple. Because of the color of our furnishings/ walls as well as the fairly large expsnsion/ contraction gaps typical of old floors, I think that if its possible, a dark color would look better.
Im open to any suggestions…stain, dye, tinted poly, etc.
Thanks,
J
Replies
If you can get all of the old varnish and finish up, my recommendation wood be to use water based dye. The nice part about mixing up a solution with water is you can strengthen it or weaken it to your tastes. Also when you put it down, you can see all of the imperfections and fix them BEFORE you apply the top coat.
dan
If you've got to match some up, I think you'll need a glaze or dye.
As to final finish, Waterlox Gymnasium Finish (might be a different name, too) is the most durable thing I've ever found. Resistant to almost all solvents and takes a helluva lot of wear.
joemilw,
How dark do you want it? Orange, Red,Brown, Black?
Give it a first coat of shellac.. that allows the stain to be evenly distributed.. stain to your choice and then give it three more coats of shellac..
Shellac is the finest floor finish you can imagine and a lot harder than polyurethane. plus it's safe a easy and can be repaired easier than any other finish..
Shellac is harder than varnish, particular polyurethane varnish. However, it scratches much easier, and has less resistance to household chemicals. Three coats of under 1 lb. cut shellac won't be enough for very many people except Frenchy. It will give the appearance of an oil finish, and have only a little more protective properties than an oil/varnish mix.
Steve,
I understand you haven't ever done a shellac floor and seen the magic of shellac on a floor. So you really aren't in a position to know.. Either check out my photos @34866.1 or do a floor yourself and prove me wrong..
I understand your reluctance, All you've ever seen or done has been with polyurethane etc..
Shellac is harder and scratches less easily than polyurethane! How can something (polyurethane) softer not scratch more easily? If some how you scratch shellac the repair is so simple (a brief wipe with a denatured alcohol soaked rag) and so invisable that you will wonder why you didn't do it before..
My 150# New Foundland who absolutely refuses to trim his toe nails (or allow us to trim them) hasn't scratched the shellac yet.. years of tromping up there in my work boots,, dirtywork boots hasn't ruined the floor yet. Now I'll grant you I walked tenderly for the first 30 days or so to allow the shellac to really harden but since then it's a floor, I walk on it!
As for household chemicals well that's not completely true.. There are plenty of household chemicals that have no effect on shellac.. the only ones that do have ammonia in them and I know this is a complex subject but don't use those. I mean you wouldn't wash your dishes with sandpaper so don't use ammonia based products on the floor.
Liitle more protection than oil/varnish mix? Now you are making things up. If you go over to Fine Home Building and search you will find several people who have had shellaced floors that endure 80-100 years or more! If you don't know the floor is shellaced you will curse trying to sand it off. (If you do you will simply flood the floor with denatured alcohol and save all that dusty sanding)..
Steve I accept your expertese on some subjects and will allow that there is differances in our approach to shellac. Untill you've done a floor with shellac you really aren't in a position to refute me.. You are repeating common myths that upon close and reasoned thought should be easy to discard.
Frenchy,
I share your enthusiasm for shellac and would like to see more people use it more often. The way to get them to do that isn't by taking a page out of the finish manufacturer's playbook and making all sorts of ridiculous claims that the product can never live up too. Shellac can stand on it's own merits.
You say to Steve..."You are repeating common myths that upon close and reasoned thought should be easy to discard. " OK, lets examine Steve's post in it's entirety.
Steve Schoene said... "Shellac is harder than varnish, particular polyurethane varnish. However, it scratches much easier, and has less resistance to household chemicals. Three coats of under 1 lb. cut shellac won't be enough for very many people except Frenchy. It will give the appearance of an oil finish, and have only a little more protective properties than an oil/varnish mix."
Point one: TRUE. Shellac is harder than varnish, of which varnishes made with polyurethane resin are the softest (in general terms). The softness or elasticity of the polyurethane varnishes are what gives them their abrasion (or scratch) resistance.
Point two: TRUE. Shellac does scratch easier than varnish, especially poly varnish. That is one of the reasons that shellac can be rubbed out to a mirror finish much easier than polyurethane. It takes an even scratch pattern easily when abrasives are used on it. Poly on the other hand doesn't scratch evenly because it is softer and more resistant to abrasion. Shellac will be damaged by any cleaning product that contains ammonia, of which there are many. It can also be damaged by the over spray from hairspray, and by fingernail polish and polish remover. I believe these are all household chemicals that will not damage a cured poly finish.
Point three: POSSIBLE MYTH/TRUTH. While it is true that three coats of under a one pound cut will not be enough for very many people, it may also not be enough for you. In which case the last part of the sentence wasn't true. If it is enough for you then the entire sentence is true.
Point four: TRUE. Three coats of less than a one pound cut will give very little build-up of shellac on the surface of the wood. It is in effect a sealer coat. This will look similar to an oil finish. I think Steve may be being generous to shellac when he says that amount of shellac will have a little better protective qualities than an oil/varnish mix. At that film thickness, the nod might go to the oil/varnish. Repair-ability would also favor the oil/varnish mix.
So please point out to me the myths in Steve's post. Also do a little research before you make a statement like this..."Shellac is harder and scratches less easily than polyurethane! How can something (polyurethane) softer not scratch more easily?" It is common knowledge that, in general, the harder a finish is the more easily it is scratched. Stating otherwise casts a shadow on your knowledge of the subject of finishing and your credibility.
Rob
It is absolutely true that shellac scratches more easily than polyurethane. Frenchy must be the only one on the planet who doesn't accept that simple truth. This isn't something I'm making up, but both conforms to my direct experience and to everything I have read on the subject from people such as Bob Flexner and Jeff Jewitt. Shellac has a great many virtues, but being more scratch resistant than polyurethane varnish is not among them.
Frenchy is quite right about it being easy to repair. Of course if one has so little shellac on a floor that it is an "in the wood" finish, then it, just like oil finishes ,don't show scratches but that's NOT the same as saying shellac doesn't scratch. Most people prefer to use an oil/varnish mix when they want an oil finish look. Internet photos don't have the resolution to prove anything about the looks of a finish.
Pre-mixed shellac is usually OK if you use it promptly and buy it from places that turn it over fast enough so that it is really fresh. But it is very limiting, there is only orange shellac (now called Amber by Zinsser) and there is Seal Coat (which is what I would call a dirty blonde) light but not as light as the ultrablonde shellacs you can mix with flakes. The Seal Coat is the only liquid dewaxed shellac (other than the aerosol) from Zinsser. Zinsser also makes a shellac it calls Clear. This is NOT the same as blonde, it has been bleached with a chlorine bleach in a process that both reduces its shelf life and impairs its moisture resistance. (Blonde shellac has the natural dye coloring removed by filtering through activated charcoal, not chemically.) Flakes come in a fairly wide range of colors and shades from lemon to garnet and very light ultra blonde to quite dark seedlac both with the natural wax, and dewaxed (except for the seedlac.)
The only polyurethane I have ever used has been on floors. Never on furniture. Most of the furniture in my house has shellac finishes, with one tea table that does have a phenolic resin varnish on the top. (Behlen Rockhard) I am quite familiar about scratching shellac. While I do keep the shellac film fairly thin, since I my interest in making furniture is 18th c. period reproductions I do have sufficient film thickness to look similar to pieces seen in museums. They just don't look like oil finishes.
Further, anyone, including Frenchy, could master the art of brushing shellac in less than an hour with any sort of effort, so what's the big deal. Some people prefer to pad on shellac, also a process that doesn't require great dexterity to master.
If only one person will ever clean the bathroom he or she can avoid cleaners with ammonia, but most of us have others around who do that on occasion and sometimes they just don't get it until too late.
"How can something (polyurethane) softer not scratch more easily?"
Because it's more resilient. Instead of scratching, it yields, and then bounces back. It's hard to scratch rubber, too.
-Steve
saschafer
So tell me how many times have you walked on your furniture?
If I take my nice rubber tires I can scratch them with virtually any sharp item. If I take my shoes and drag them across the tires they will scuff those tires. However my shoes won't scuff iron <grin>
There have been enough people from Fine HomeBuilding and Fine Wood Working who have stopped over to confirm that my floor looks great and has no scratches.
If large excited dogs won't frighten you you're welcome to come over and examine the floor if you don't trust pictures..
But frankly I don't expect to see you. You have been so steadfast of one idea that you'd never allow yourself to look and learn will you?
Edited 3/1/2008 6:21 pm ET by frenchy
"If I take my nice rubber tires I can scratch them with virtually any sharp item."
That's exactly it--you need a sharp item to scratch something soft like rubber. But to scratch something brittle, you don't need a sharp item, you just need a hard item. I can go into the technical details of pressure, radius of curvature, etc., to explain why this is true, but I don't think it's really appropriate here.
"You have been so steadfast of one idea that you'd never allow yourself to look and learn will you?"
I think you're confusing me with someone else.
-Steve
sascherafer
I've had very good success with shellac on floors. As have others! (go over to Fine Home Building for confirmation)
At one time shellac was the finish of choice.. It fell out of favor with the marketing efforts the various suppliers made.. However the rule of unintended consequences occured.. Long drying time, foul odor, complete recoating to cover repairs, etc. seemed to be accepted as just the price of progress.
Nobody ever stood back and asked the critcal question against all the marketing hype are we better with this finish than the old shellac overall?
OK I'll grant that if you leave pools of water to dry on shellac it will turn white.. However who is going to leave pools of water in their house? Plus it takes many hours for that to occur. Should it occur you simply take denatured alcohol and wipe up the area that has turned white and re-apply. The repair blends invisably with the old shellac..
Such repairs cannot be done with most other finishes, not to the degree of invisablity that shellac has. And NOT without sanding!
I believed you and others when you told me shellac scratches easily. So I did my first floor in a bedroom where with slippers the floor had a reasonable chance of surviving.
When it did in spite of my tromping on that floor with my work boots on and my dog running back and forth, jumping up into the bed (You haven't lived untill 150 pound dog jumps up onto you in the middle of the night <grin>)
So the next floor I did was the heavily trafficed bridge.. In our house that floor got as much traffic as any area did.. and the dogs muddy paws and unclipped claws didn't yield visable scratches. Nor did my tromping around in work boots etc.. The wood actually dented as you can see in those photos I showed but that's not the finish! You can clearly see the finish is unmarked..
That's when I started touting shellac. Now it's been a few years since that all began and I haven't had to change a single tune.. I still highly recommend shellac. Since you've not done a floor in shellac I don't believe that you are in a clear position to judge unbiased.
Those who have been here will tell you that shellac produces a very nice and durable finish for a floor. To retain your credibility why not adapt a wait and see attitude?
Yeah sascherafer! You're credibility is really taking a hit here. Next thing you know you are going to be responding to the wrong people and misspelling their names while your posting dubious information.
Rob (wiping tears of laughter from my eyes)
"You're credibility is really taking a hit here."
Yeah, well, you have to take what life gives you....
-Steve
I was reading your post on shellac floors and decided to give shellac a try on my new kitchen floor. I was curious about what kind of shellac you used, how many coats, and whether you chose to wax the floor as well?Any insight would be welcome, vincent
vincentedwards,
I gave my floors three coats of Zinssers bulls eye thinned down with 2 gallons of denatured alcohol to one gallon of shellac.. That's about enought to do 500 sq.ft. save any extra for touch ups. Flood it on, do it fast and don't ever go back over to touch something up or get a spot you missed.. first coat takes 15 minutes to dry then sand off the little nubs that get raised with a 220 3M sanding sponge (the yellow one) real lick and promise type sanding..takes about a second to a second and a half per square foot.. don't try to make things perfect. the next coat melts right into the first coat so you're wasting your time..
Flood on the second coat fast again, this coat will take about 30 minutes to dry before you flood on the third coat..(takes an hour to dry)
Don't bother to clean the brush. let it dry and save it for your next shellac project.. (it's easiler and a lot faster to apply with one of those lambs wool applicators on a long handle)
If you spill shellac on your clothes don't worry it will come out in the wash..
I haven't waxed my floor yet but you sure can.
Edited 3/17/2008 11:57 am ET by frenchy
thanks for the advise frenchy,I cut my shellac 50/50 with denatured. The first coat I used straight uncut "sealcoat" (it's already a thinner cut) and the next two will be 'bullseye' cut 50/50. My good old shellac brush has been around for a year now, soft and ready after a half hour soaking in denatured alcohol. I've had good luck with a maroon scotch bright pad for sanding, except the white oak which takes some more vigorous work with 220 grit to knock down the grain. I know a lot of old floors that used shellac are also waxed with paste wax. I think I'm going to give it a shot... should make for a little extra water resistance and protection.
vincentedwards
That should be fine, it will take longer to dry between coats and probably a little more care needs to be used in application but shellac is very tolerant..
V
Make sure a floor with wax applied get a cleaning with some mineral spirits and a good wipe down before the shellac. Wax and shellac don't do well.
Yes, you want to remove the wax before applying a finish, but shellac is the finish least likely to have problems with a bit of residual wax.
A lot of bird walking on this post so I will try to bring it back to your original question. A dye stain will indeed give you the best results for a deep color change from hard maple's blonde color. If you are doing it yourself I would use Homestead finishings Transtint dye liquids. Check out their website and you can buy that stuff cheaper in larger quantities than you can get at Woodcraft. Seal it with a coat of shellac and try mixing the TransTint to the color you want. It works in alcohol or water. For that big of an area you might want to try water. Do some test boards and see what you like. Most of the pro floor guys are using a product from Sweden called Bona X. I have not tried it but I hear it is good.
Let me suggest that you would be better off dyeing with a analine dye powder such as TransFast as opposed to the TransTint. Here's my reasoning. Dye remains soluble in what ever solvents it is made to dissolve in. There is no binder. So if you use TransTint which dissolves is water, alcohol or oil, then it will dissolve into whatever solvent is used for the next coat, muddying it with the dye. But if you use dye soluble only in water, very little will be redissolved into a shellac sealing coat and even less into an oil based sealer.
TransTint is a good product but its best uses are as a colorant to create toner from clear finishes, as opposed to being used as a straight dye. It works fine as a dye if the following coat is sprayed, especially in a pretty dry coating. But if you have to mop on the next coat you run the risk of creating problems.
There are a few caveats about using dye as well. It isn't nearly as light fast as pigment so in sun washed room, especially if the glazing is single pane, you could expect some fading, fading that could be noticeable if furniture is moved after sitting in one location for some time. Double pane window reduce the UV content quite a bit, and double pane it low e coating quite a bit more. And if you live in a hurricane alley, the laminated impact resistant windows remove over 99% of UV light.
You might want to take a look at the Bona products. From my research thus far into finishing my Brazilian cherry floors they seem to be the leaders in the commercial/high end residential floor finishes. They have many stain options too. Beware, their products are expensive. The Traffic floor finish I am planning to use is $160 per gallon, but I want to do it right.
Good luck
I have had excellent results on maple stair treads with Jel'd brand gel stain when I had a custom colour made to match my prefinished mirage maple floors. I was VERY shocked to see no blotch at all. I was prepared to spend most of a weekend with various grades of shellac for sealing purposes and various strengths of thinned stain to fend off any blotch problems and sneak up on the colour strength, but low and behold, right out of the can it was perfect !! I sprayed 6 coats of semigloss wb floor urethane and it's been awesome.
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