In Which A Floor is Finished Part 1

This is quite a few weeks late, but the master bedroom is done! Well not quite done, but the shellac is on the floor and it doesn't look half bad. In total, 2 lbs of shellac were put down, but quite a bit was taken up by sanding out mistakes midway through the process.

Day 1

The first day of shellacking was a bit messy. The night before, I dissolved 2 lbs of platina shellac in 3 gallons of shellac for a 1.5 lb cut. This is a medium weight cut and, as I found out, on the high end of a brush on application. It was cold and rainy so I also prepared the house by cranking the heat up to remove some of the humidity from the air. General guidance is to avoid relative humidity above 80% but coupled with the cold, I felt like 60% was a little too high. I got it down to 40% and the room temp up to 60 F. Let me also mention that my idea of testing in an "inconspicuous spot" usually involves finding the most visible spot and starting there.
My first two brush application coats left lots of brush marks that I was very unhappy about. I had heard that pour and spread works for polyurethane finishes, and feeling bold (and dumb), I decided to try it out.
That could have gone better, to say the least. The 1.5 lb/cut was too thick to flow easily and left lots of puddles that dried into ridges. I also was using a deck painting 5" brush with a 6" handle, so I ended up standing in the shellac puddle as it dried and leaving footprints all over the room. On the bright side, the areas where the finish wasn't disturbed are glass smooth and beautiful.

In for a penny, I put down two more poured coats, trying to be more careful about where I was stepping. It didn't work, I ended up falling over and putting my hand flat in a half dried patch, ruining the finish. In a panic, I tried thinning out the surface of the finish with about 1/2 of a gallon of denatured alcohol. I only ended up making a bigger mess and splattering shellac on the walls.

Day 2

On the second day of shellacking, I enlisted the help of my lovely wife and the day's work went much more smoothly. Temperature and humidity was still a problem, but she did the pouring while I did the brushing. I cut the shellac to closer to a .75 lb/cut so it flowed much better. It also helped that we realized that the handle from our push broom could be threaded into the paint brush handle. We still had puddling problems due to the size of the brush, but it looked better than the first day.

There are still plenty of splotchy bits including a stray footprint or two.

Day 3

Even with the improvements in our pouring technique, every pour resulted in more puddle edges and I decided that I should stick to brushing. 

This is the result of the first coat:

And this is after 4 coats:

I think it's starting to come together, but you can see the difference between the glossy area on the left, and the more matte area on the right.

Day 4

More brushing today, I started to wish that I had a heavier cut because I was clearly not putting much shellac down with every coat, making the whole process take longer. Still, the thin coats are helping smooth out the surface and the weather is getting much nice, making humidity control easier.

We're pretty close to done I think: