In which the upstairs floors are finished
***this is a rewrite because blogger decided not to actually save, despite hitting save multiple times and getting a "saved" message. Isn't the cloud wonderful***
This time, I used an actual 2 lb/cut of shellac. I made up ~2 gallons (4 lbs + 2 gallon) thinking that would be enough to cover the rest of the upstairs (500 sqft or so). The 2 gallons got me through the bedrooms, but I only had a 1/4 of a gallon for the hallway, so I made a second 1/2 gallon batch that I eyeballed to ~2 lb cut. The 2 lb/cut builds much faster than the 0.75 cut I was using on the master bedroom floor: I had scheduled 2 weeks for shellacking, based on how long it took to get the master done, but after 9 coats in 2 days, I declared the bedrooms done. The hallway/landing got 5 coats over 2 days; I could have spent another day or two on the landing, as it will see higher wear than any of the bedrooms, but we decided to stop while we were ahead. Luckily, additional layers are pretty easy to lay down in the future.
We were getting sick and tired of waiting for the upstairs floors to be done, so the moment I the bed was assembled, we grabbed scrapers and got back to scraping. It's been so long since we finished scraping the master bedroom, I'd forgotten how much work it was. We hit a wall with the darker shellac in the red bedroom and hallway: we couldn't seem to get below the first layer of shellac so the floors remained darker than we would have liked. I broke out the belt sander (after its failed initial run) and with a bit of elbow grease, I managed to get the floors to a color I deemed acceptable. I could have been a little more careful as the rougher grits left some marks we only found after everything was finished.
Once the belt sander was put away, I used a handheld orbital sander with 120 and 150 grits to level off the rough spots and prep for shellac. I have been using diablo sandnet discs for shellac work, but with much of the shellac gone from the belt sander, the lifespan of the net discs was extremely poor for their cost. I switched to the cheapo mirka gold discs for the remainder of the 120 grit and used the excellent diablo red discs for the 150 grit work. Then we vacuumed and mineral spirited the floor to pick up dust and debris, and hit the floor with some denatured alcohol to try and even out what color was left. It didn't have much of an effect. Onto shellacking!This time, I used an actual 2 lb/cut of shellac. I made up ~2 gallons (4 lbs + 2 gallon) thinking that would be enough to cover the rest of the upstairs (500 sqft or so). The 2 gallons got me through the bedrooms, but I only had a 1/4 of a gallon for the hallway, so I made a second 1/2 gallon batch that I eyeballed to ~2 lb cut. The 2 lb/cut builds much faster than the 0.75 cut I was using on the master bedroom floor: I had scheduled 2 weeks for shellacking, based on how long it took to get the master done, but after 9 coats in 2 days, I declared the bedrooms done. The hallway/landing got 5 coats over 2 days; I could have spent another day or two on the landing, as it will see higher wear than any of the bedrooms, but we decided to stop while we were ahead. Luckily, additional layers are pretty easy to lay down in the future.
Red Room:
Upstairs Hallway:
Light Room:
It almost looks like a new floor.
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