Dark Reflections

Two or three weeks ago I promised to post pictures of the 2nd floor hallway floor shellacking I was finally, finally getting done.  Here they are, with commentary (including a great deal of whingeing and wailing):

The work commenced a little around a quarter to one AM on the 13th.  First step was to float a fresh coat of mahogany-tinted shellac over the stairs to the 3rd floor that I did a year ago October.  I made the mistake back then of letting the animals with their capers and their claws back onto the finish too soon, and in several places they'd scratched the treads to the bare wood:

With cat and dog scratches

What you see above is actually after I took some plain, untinted Kusmi #1 shellac to it and rubbed some of the worst of the scratches out.  Here the upper stairs are with the fresh coat:

Too dark and red

Now, I wouldn't take the evidence of my Canon PowerShot SX120 camera to convict a cockroach.  It knows nothing of accurate color-rendering, and it's useless for depicting degrees of sheen.  But this photo does testify true, first that the scratches were colored in, which is good, and second, that the color of the top shellac coat is too damn dark.

All this is what I get for failing to look for the scratchpad where I wrote down the proportions of mahogany and walnut dye to shellac a year ago.  As it happens, it wasn't actually up in my study where I thought I'd left it; no, that notepad has to be in the avalanche that is currently my guest bedroom, where I dumped everything before I started repainting the study in late August.  In any event, I didn't even try to look for the recipe when I mixed up the latest batch.  Instead I used a formula inverse to that I used to mix the walnut shellac for the trim in March (meaning, mostly mahogany with a smidge of walnut instead of vice-versa).  And even with that, I used less dye than the formula called for.  I thought it'd match.

So my first mistake was laying on that shellac at night, under insufficient light.  It wasn't till I got to the bottom treads down at the hallway that I noticed how dark the new color was, and how I'd merrily killed the golden-brown color I'd loved so much in those steps.

This I loved.  Too late now.

My next mistake was not drawing the obvious conclusion from the effect of the new shellac on the upper stairs. No, I was so keen to get things moving that I went ahead and used it on the floor. You'd think when I saw how reddish and dark it was on the first floorboards in the back of the closet, I'd dip a rag in the jar of alcohol, wipe it off, then go dilute the mix with more shellac and alcohol and start over.

But no, I had to keep going.

You'd think I'd remember that the first coat on the study stairs looked like this:

But somehow I thought it'd be All Right and marched-- I mean, brushed-- on.

This is where I left it around 3:30 in the morning on the 13th.  The camera with the flash makes it look more finished than it is.

But this isn't exactly accurate, either:

Since then, it's hit me that I made another mistake: I forgot that with fully-stripped and sanded wood with no patina, the first colored coat sets up so much better if an untinted coat is laid on first.  So even though I knew good and well by the next evening that what I had was too dark, in the following days I still had to lay on two or three more coats of mahogany-tinted shellac, though not half as strong, so the color wouldn't be just a watered-down burgundy red.

The next two days, the 13th and 14th, I finished the first coat on the hallway and brought it down the stairs. 

The second stage starts at the bathroom door

Then on in front of the upper stairs

Did this in 3 stages, to have a dry place to perch on

And if I thought looked watered-wine color up in the hallway, did it ever go red on the main stairs!

My friend Frieda* came by about the time I finished up the bottom tread.  She thought it looked "beautiful."  I'm trying really hard to take her word for it and so make the best of it.  Wiping it down and starting over wasn't an object once I got to this point-- too much damage to the walnut-shellacked risers and stringers.  I'll follow up with a post or two on how it looks now, two weeks later, with the caveat that my crummy camera is not to be trusted . . . And I'll promise to buck up and not whinge any more.  Really.

Announcement

Yes, it's as late as the date stamp says.

But I simply had to announce that after a long Monday of sanding, steaming out dents, more sanding, more steaming out dents, a whole lot of vacuuming and dusting, a wipe-down with denatured alcohol, and, oh yes, a little more steaming out of dents followed by more sanding and vacuuming, I finally got things in order with my 2nd floor hall and the main stairs to get some mahogany-tinted shellac onto the hall floor.

Ta-daaaaahhhhh!!

Only "some," because I began by applying a repair coat to the stairs to the 3rd floor, and I didn't start that till after 1:00 AM.   I then proceeded to lay a first coat onto half the hall.  Only half, because my upstairs hall is L-shaped and  I can't levitate and I don't want lap marks at the midpoints of the longest boards.  Besides, it was past 3:30 by the time I finished the first leg of the L, and if I get called in to teach in the morning that's rapidly approaching, I'm going to be a big slice of burnt toast as it is.

But after all this time, I thought it was only right for me to mark the occasion.  Pictures and commentary to follow.

Actual Work Getting Done

Shellac dries fast.  This is good.

Really.  The shellac work I'm doing in my stairhall is actually starting to look like something.  I may actually be on my way to getting this done.  

And that's scary.

(That was a joke.  I think.)

The inner casings on the five 2nd floor hall doorways are all done, including the casing to my bedroom door that I had to take down to mend.  That also has primer on the bedroom side.  The blotchiness problem I solved thanks to some advice I dug up the other night on the Internet-- A forum suggested cutting down the amount of tint in the shellac and let the application of successive layers build up the color.  I was just upstairs, and was getting a little worried that maybe I've got it a fuzz too dark, but it's not as dusky as it originally was, and we're talking at night under only a 60 watt lightbulb.

The flash makes it look brighter than it really is

The stair rail and shoe are done as well.  I really like the way the bannister came out.  I've figured out that if I start shellacking the piece well short of the top, work in the length between the initial wet area and the top with a dryer brush, then keep stroking upward (or in one direction only, if working flat) into the wet area, I can minimize the blotches and keep the finish uniform.  It worked on the bannister, I think.

The balusters are done as well.  They were theoretically mostly done last summer with the two coats I gave them then, but I saw that my intended three coats wasn't going to give the tone and sheen to match the stairrail and shoe.  They have five coats of shellac on them now; six on the outside faces.

Now I have to lay on more coats of shellac to the shoe and rail fillets.  They're laid out on my workbench downstairs, waiting the next time I have available.  But first I have to strip (waaaaagghh!) the cap to the 1st floor newel post.  I didn't have enough light in my workshop, and didn't notice till it was too late that a wide brown-black line of walnut-mahogany shellac was accumulating all around the bottom edge.  Yuck.  Strip it off and start again.

Stairs to 3rd floor study

The top newel post is done-- I think-- and today I got a second coat on the risers to the 3rd floor and on the main stair stringer on the stair rail side.  (I ran out of the right tint of shellac after that, and the main stair risers and the opposite stringer had to wait till I could mix up more.)

Last evening my friend Hannah* and her husband Steve* were going to come over to help me reassemble and rehang the casing to the bedroom door.  They couldn't fit it into their schedule as it turned out.  And now that I've remembered that I really want to get the finish on the hall floor before that trim goes back up, I see it's just as well.

Guess what-- this trim isn't that dark. Stoopy camera!

But in anticipation of getting the bedroom door hung, I shellacked its stop moulding, though I haven't touched it for any door else.  So this afternoon I took a piece of that stop upstairs to make sure I was getting the shellac-white primer divide on the casings right.  I stood the piece up against the closed door to the guest bedroom, flat against the shellacked jamb.  And, oh, my!  Wow.  It actually looked like something!  Like real work getting done!  Like maybe sometime before the Mayan calendar runs out my house might get out of my head and into reality!

That's scary.

Trumpets (But with Mutes)

Yesterday, Tuesday, 29 March 2011, was a momentous day here at the Sows' Ear.  For on that day, after half a week of taping and masking, I finally laid on the first coats of shellac on the woodwork of my 2nd and 1st floor halls.

(Can I get a dish of applesauce here?)

This is the first week I've had evenings off since the end of January, when I started working front desk at Dick & Harry's Tax Service.*  Initially I was merely going to wipe everything down and do the shellacking Later.  But it hits me that dust has a tendency to resettle, especially with four furry animals in the house.  So some finish application was in order.

Started with a clear coat of Kusmi #2 on the doorway to the 3rd floor and to the former entryway downstairs.  I'd noticed on samples I'd made that the tinted shellac shows up better when it goes on over a clear coat instead of wood that's clean sanded.  

Doorway to Study stairs, 2nd floor

On this 2nd floor doorway you can see where the paint soaked in behind where the old stop moulding used to be.  I tried sanding it out, but it was too deep. Will the tinted shellac cover that?  I hope so.

Here's the doorway between the 1st floor hall and the front room partly clearcoated.  The camera makes the color look more intense and orange than it was.

Old entry door, 1st floor

Then the same untinted Kusmi #2 on the sanded sill between the 1st floor hall and the living room.

Cased opening sill

My initial idea was that I'd let these coats dry overnight and do the tinted shellac today.  But I'd forgotten how quickly shellac dries.  So what the heck, why not?

Started at the top, with the risers of the stairs to the 3rd floor.  These still have patina on them, and didn't need an initial clear coat.

3rd floor stair risers, partially done
 

  Then the rest of the risers, the casing, and the bottom end of the stringer.

1st coat shellac, 2nd floor hall

 Then the hall side of the door casings to the guest bedroom, the bathroom, and the hall closet.

And the curved baseboard and the 2x frame around the 2nd floor hall window.

Since I was rolling with it, I proceeded to do the upstairs newel post, the oak stair bannister and shoe, the 1st floor newel, the frame around the downstairs hall window, the doorway between the hallway and the front room, the sill between the hall and the living room, and the moulding that sits on the wall over the hall bench, under the bannister shoe.  Then I came back up and laid a coat on the main stair tread and on the pine stringers either side of the main stairs.  Drew the line at shellacking the hall bench, since it still had the protective paper on it and I hadn't cleaned underneath it.

Looking down from the 2nd floor

I don't have pictures of all this wondrousness, because my stoopy camera eats batteries like I should drink water, the ones I had in were dying, and I had no more in the house to replace them.  (Last time I'll buy a camera that takes AAs, believe you me.)  But maybe that's just as well, since I was shellacking without a worklight, deliberately.  The plan was that if I worked by natural light only I wouldn't get too fussy about making the first coat perfectly even, but leave it to the next coats to blend it all in.

Blotchy mess!

But as you can see from this very blurry shot I took today (no battery power left to use the flash), maybe that wasn't such a--ahem!--bright idea.  What a blotchy mess, and this doesn't show the half of it.

The saving grace is that the successive coats of shellac should blend it in, though it'll probably take a clear coat or two to accomplish that.

The color isn't as dark as it shows up in the photos.  But I doubt I'll make it as walnutty-dark as it was originally.  I want the reddish warmth and the grain to come through.

The Baby Has Arrived!

Fourteen of them, actually.

Early in the morning this past Saturday.

. . . in case you think I'm suddenly running a foundling home or have been invaded by the offspring of particularly fecund kinswomen, I'd better explain.

The websites explaining how to sand down your floors for refinishing consistently say it's a three-step process:  rough sanding, medium sanding, and fine sanding.  And, if I may quote, after the fine sanding the wood "should be as smooth as a baby's bottom."

Well, when it comes to the fourteen treads of my main staircase, the baby has arrived.  The rough places that could be sanded down have been sanded down, and the holes and dings that were too deep to sand down have been filled.  Tackled them with the 80-grit paper (medium) last Monday and Thursday, and had at it with the 120-grit this past Friday night.  So this stage is done, done, done.

I think the nosings came out well enough.  Most of them had to be rerounded, due to hard wear.  Trickiest thing is keeping myself from being deceived by the work light into mistaking a wood grain line for an edge that needs more knocking down.  I didn't touch the nosings with the 40-grit paper, oh, no.  80 and 120 only, and finished off with some sanding sponges I forget the grit rating of, but which helped me create a consistent curve.

(And concerning this picture of the bottom tread nosing:  No, it's not Perfectly Clean.  But it's clean enough for the seven coats of shellac it's going to get.  And it's a heckovuhlot cleaner and better than it was in July of 2007 when I removed the carpet and revealed what you see in this post.  Scroll down five photos and blast your eyes with that!)

After the sanding was finished, I gave the stairs a quick vacuuming and a go-over with a tack cloth, then put the cardboard tread protectors back and at around 3:00 AM went to bed.  No reno work to speak of accomplished over the weekend-- I had other things to do.  But on today's agenda is cutting thin strips of wood to fill in the hinge and strike mortises in two of the stairhall doorways that used to have doors but now don't.  The mortise routings were filled or covered up before, but not in a way that would take an natural finish.

Wish me luck at not slicing my fingers while I'm at it!

Filling Holes

Just to prove I continue to make progress, here are my stairs with the holes I filled yesterday.

I hope to get the treads medium-sanded tomorrow.  No excuse not to, even if I do get called in to work.

But here's something scary:  When I was cleaning up the dust on the stairs and bannister rail yesterday, I noticed I had cracks in my wall plaster at the point where the wall opens up to the downstairs hall and the downstairs ceiling comes in.  That place was really bad a year and a half ago, and I put a lot of work into pulling up the plaster and spackling the cracks.  Now I have this three-way hairline in the faux finish paint job.

Carp.  I don't know if it's the plaster or the spackle.  Either way, can't things just stay fixed?

That's Done, at Least!

Look at that.  Isn't it pretty?

Fourteen stair treads, all rough-sanded.

Yes, they need lots of filling, then a go with the medium and then the fine grit.  But the old dirt and grime and roughness is off.  It's gone.

And it's still 2010.

In which case, I'm hitting the Publish button and going to go party.

See you next year!

For My Sins

I'm not sure how to explain it.  Too much care or not being careful enough; not doing well or not knowing when to leave well-enough alone.  But some diabolic fate seems now to be binding me to the next-to-the-bottom tread of my stairway to the 3rd floor, there eternally to be chained not physically, but emotionally, as I expiate my shellacking sins.

Late Wednesday night the 3rd, I assayed to get the seventh coat of shellac on those stairs.  It didn't go too badly, really.  I filled a divot in the next-to-the-bottom step with the Miniwax wood filler putty that you're not supposed to finish over.  But I need something flexible there and the shellac ought to move with it.  It seems to be working so far.

But after I got done, at just about straight up midnight, I noticed that I hadn't properly brushed out the finish at the right hand side of that same tread.  You definitely could see a brown build up there.

So did I go to bed and sleep on it and see if maybe it looked okay in the morning?  Heck, no.  I got a brush with some alcohol on it and tried to blend it in.

Of course, it didn't.  It just took the upper coats off. 

I tried a little more.  It took off some more.

To hell with it.  I tried cleaning the whole surface with alcohol.  It didn't take enough off.

Off to bed, and deal with it later.

On Saturday the 6th I went the whole hog and pulled out the Western Wood Doctor refinisher and the 00 steel wool and took the entire finish off of it.  So there. 

And proceeded to start essentially from scratch on that tread and started applying the six or seven coats anew.

Last Sunday, I was getting there.  When I wielded a full brush with a light hand, the shellac blended in beautifully. Just one more coat and I'd be done!

Damn!  Somebody remind me not to be doing that after 11:00 PM when I'm tired and the light isn't that good anyway.  This last time, I failed to notice or brush out puddles on both sides of that tread!  It looked terrible! 

Was I going to get out the WWD and strip it off for the second time?

Not likely.  An article on the This Old House website says you can repair shellac, everybody says repairability is one of the great things about shellac, and I was going to repair it.

It's taken me the last three days (and at least one dream-obsessed night) to deal with it, using a small artist's brush first to dissolve the brown ridges and then to lay on a little color at a time.  But I think-- think!-- I'm to the point where I'm going to say Good Enough.  I know the aberrant places are there.  I will have to live with the reminder of how dumb it is to do finishing at midnight when I'm tired and not thinking or seeing straight.  I stick my camera in close where I can catch every last irregularity of it. But nobody else will notice unless I point it out to them.

And if nothing else, this proves that I was right to do my experimenting and get my technique down on these upper steps.  Pretty much no one's going to see them except for me.

Scary Things

I knew the shellacking was going too well up to now!  I knew the Demon of Klutziness was going to pop out and get me at some point!

Or did I just ignore the Angel of Good Sense?

Friday, I had the fresh shellac for the stairs all mixed up and ready to go.  I'd been decanting the stuff into a square plastic Rubbermaid storage container, which was handy for the brush and had a nice lid to seal it between coats. 

That evening down in my workshop, I poured the tinted mixture into this and managed to fill it all the way to the top.

"You're going to spill that," my good sense told me.  "Pour some of it back."

"No, I won't.  It's better to have more in the plastic container.  I'm going to need it for the last two coats."

So I took the closed and brimming container of shellac upstairs.

Once up at the top of the 3rd floor stairs, the first thing I realized was that I'd forgotten to add the teaspoon or so of 91% isopropyl alcohol to keep it workable longer.  But I was too lazy to go down the basement to get the bottle and add it.

Next thing I noticed was that there seemed to be a lot more hairs and dust squiggles landing in the wet shellac than there were last Tuesday.  You think maybe the vacuuming I did a few days ago didn't last till the end of the week?

Struggling with that, I got the first four or five treads done well enough.  But on the fifth or sixth one down, I was reaching for the smaller brush to do the nosing, and-- out popped the Demon of Klutziness!!!!

No, I got careless.   I jiggled something, or joggled something else, and that full container of shellac tipped over and cascaded down the stairs.

I knew it!  I knew I was going to do something stupid like that!

There was no time to wring hands, or be dramatic, or even take pictures.  The river of shellac was washing over at least three treads, and I had to clean it up before the whole job on all of them was ruined.

I grabbed a clean jar I had at hand, and brushed all the runny shellac I could into it.  Once that was closed and in a safe place, I quickly brushed the wet remainder over the treads that needed to be done anyway

What I didn't think of was that the lowest tread that was spilled on, the one with the least renegade shellac on it, was the one I should have brushed out first.  By the time I'd dealt with the overflow and the two treads above, this one was splotchy and blotchy and too tacky to do anything with.

Yesterday noon I tackled it.  Applied another coat of shellac, hoping it'd blend in as advertised.  So I took a pad of sheep's wool wrapped in a piece of old T-sheet, soaked it in denatured alcohol, and rubbed off the top layer or two off.  That removed the blotching.

Today I've been reapplying the coats to that tread, and I think it's to the point where my scary mishap doesn't show.  Just now this evening I've got the official sixth coat on all the steps . . . which should mean I'm done with them . . . if I didn't think they really need a seventh coat to get the color I want.

We'll see how that goes.  Hopefully the shellac spooks have had enough and will leave me in peace!

I'm Finally Doing It

Finally, finally, after months and years of reading and researching, talking and blogging, ordering and mixing, tinting and testing, I'm finally doing it.  I'm finally laying shellac onto a surface here at the Sow's Ear.

As you might have guessed, I'm starting at the top, with the treads of the stairs to the 3rd floor.  The treads are going on in and 1.5 pound cut of Kusmi #1 button lac dissolved in 195 proof denatured alcohol and tinted with mahogany aniline dye.   I'm not staining or dyeing the wood first, but putting the tone down in layers, so I can get the color I want.

I can't find the sample I did a few weeks ago, but I know it took six coats to get the right color.  It's all right, because freshly-mixed shellac dries quickly (you can recoat in forty minutes to an hour), and more coats diluted to a thinner consistency makes for a more durable finish.  Actually, I'm adding a nitch of isopropyl alcohol to retard drying so it won't get tacky before I get the brush marks blended in.

Here's today's progress.  Please note that my camera renders the color entirely too reddish, no matter how I adjust it.

11:35 AM:  The stairs to the Study stripped, sanded, dusted, and ready to be finished.

12:11 PM:  All taped to keep the mahogany-toned shellac off the risers.  Those'll be done in a warm walnut to like what was on them before.

(Wait a minute.  Almost  all taped.  Missed a spot.)

12:16 PM:  The top treads, without finish, and

12:27 PM:  The same, with one coat.

12:45 PM:  Making progress.

3:39 PM:  Two coats on.


6:27 PM:  After a light 220-grit sanding, ready for coat No. 3

7:10 PM:  Three coats applied.

8:43 PM:  Ready for No. 4

9:19 PM:  Four coats completed.  I'm running low on shellac, so I'll need to dissolve the rest of the buttons I have before I can finish this stage of the job.

And finally,

9:29 PM:  Huw the boikitteh, thoroughly disgusted with me for enleashing all those funny smells and for not allowing him to go up to the 3rd floor study, all day.