Refinishing Parquet Floor

[Thomas Olesh]

Hi all,

I'm new to the forum. Been coming across it for years though, looking into different aspects of woodworking. Mainly stain and polyurethane - although I'd really like to get into wood dyes and various other finishes. I guess this project helps with one of those.

We bought our house some years ago and it had parquet throughout except for bedrooms, bathrooms and stairs. We covered it with carpet at some point, and have now decided to pull the carpet and refinish the wood floors. A few years back there was some water damage due to a bad donut under a toilet, so given there was carpet over the parquet that was damaged, we pulled that back. Then we pulled up the old damaged parquet and leveled that spot off with plywood, laid the carpet back down.

Fast forward to the present, we now had to patch that spot in and make it match the rest. I got lucky on the first guess, as it was $100 for a box. So being wrong wouldn't have been ideal! Anyhow, we decided to go with 3# amber shellac, followed by dewaxed shellac, then flooring polyurethane. We've never finished or refinished hardwood floors before. Just wanted to share some pictures of the amber + dewaxed shellac (all the progress so far) as it really has turned out pretty nice. Next step is satin poly!


Tommy


--EDIT-- Sorry - being new to the forum, I didn't realize folks couldn't view picture attachments since May 2. Apologize for the tease!

[Stan Calow]

It does look great Thomas. What did you sand it down to?

[Thomas Olesh]

Thanks. Sanded it down to bare wood working up to 120 grit. We were using a square floor buffer since we had no experience with the drum sander and didn't want to create ruts in the floor, but ~650 s.f. took the better part of 2 days. I feel if we ever do this again we can do the drum sander.

[Thomas Olesh]

---UPDATE---

That satin poly was a mistake - took the beauty right out of the floor. We went over the satin with an oil-based gloss poly and it looks as good as it did with just the shellac beforehand.

Sorry for spamming, just didn't want to leave this incomplete since I mentioned throwing satin poly on there. Don't want anybody else making that same mistake!

[Stan Calow]

Good to know Thomas, I'm thinking through a floor refinish now and was pondering a satin finish.

[Art Mann]

I refinished a parquet floor in a house I used to own. After sanding it down, I applied polyurethane directly to the wood. It worked beautifully and was exceptionally durable for a long time. I don't see any reason for complicating the process with shellac.

[Thomas Olesh]

Stan, glad to know I could help.

Art, the reason for complicating the process was having to patch in new parquet and making it match the 30 year old parquet. Otherwise we likely would've done what you did. But I'm glad I got familiar with shellac and issues with poly bonding, and whatnot.