Beware of Wolfs in Sheeps Clothing Cont...

We arrived prompt at 830 am on the Monday morning with full intention of getting both floors prepped and at least one coat of Hardwax on the Walnut floor and a coat of stain on the Oak floor before we left on the first day, leaving the next day to apply one further coat on the Walnut floor and two coats one being the mettalic wax i had obtained from my suppliers on the Oak floor.

Rupert greeted us when we arrived, handed me a deposit in an envelope and i gave him a receipt. He made us tea while we fetched in our euipment. Once tea was ready he had a smoke with us outside the house, chatting. Rupert stayed the whole of the first day watching it seemed everything we did and asking question after question on what we was doing, with his wife supplying a constant flow of Tea and Coffee. What a great job, Lovely people plenty of brew can't ask for more we thought, besides im always happy talking about what we do so the constant questions wasn't that much of a bother for me.

Rupert asked if i would put some Bona gap fill in the gaps upstairs on the Oak floor, I did this for him no problem, I had to use a similar colour to what we were going to stain the floor and it turned out to be a medium brown so i applied the filler a couple of hours prior to us sanding the Oak floor. My partner took a couple of hours to sand the walnut floor upto a lovely smooth ripple free 120 grit and ready for hardwaxing of which i was carrying out while he would be sanding the Oak upstairs.

The Oak floor took a little longer to prep as pre-finishes are usually a lot deeper into the grain than what waterbourne finishes are, so we started with a 36 grit to clean off the old solvent pre-finish and worked upto a 120 grit finish through the grades which is pretty standard stuff to us. We proceeded to stain the floor the desired colour and after tidying up we left for the evening getting exactly done what we had planned, tomorrow we would put the final coat of wax on the Walnut floor and put two coats of the speciality finish on the Oak and hopefully achieve what had been approved on the sample i had supllied, which admittably looked really good but very Ikea to me personally.

We arrived promt the next morning, Rupert greeted us, then shot off to go and do some work himself, Sharon made us a nice cup of tea, which we drunk outside while having a smoke. We put the final coat of Matt hardwax on the Walnut floor and then set about applying the coloured wax on the Oak floor, The first coat went down well but was hard work getting all the colour into the Oaks grain, Once the first coat was put on i suggested us getting the buffer to apply the second as my arms were dropping off, It would make it easier to get Even, I explained to my collegue.

We popped back to the depot picked up the machine, some buffing pads and returned a few hours later, we waited for the first coat to dry and then buffed in a second coat, but the opacity was not the same as the sample i had carried out, the two coats on the sample board was a lot more metallic this was looking like a washed out beige and around the edges had gone darker, It didn't look nice, so i called Sharon to show her. She was optomistic saying that she quite liked the effect, I explained the patchyness around the edges and into the threshold, she agreed, then Rupert turned up, He agreed on quite liking it, But asked us to wait until the next morning and we could take a look in the daylight, He then looked at the end of the room where we had had to cut in around a TV stand, Looks patchy here he said, I explained we could not properly get to that point without removing the stand and he suggested us all moving the stand and re- sanding that area before we left, to complete the job. We agreed and continued into the night to sand an area that should have been exposed for us in the first place, OK we should have pointed this out at the time, but we thought the dark going into a shaded area would be sufficent to mask the slight change, but Rupert was insistant that we finished this before we went. We eventually finished up at about 11:15 pm, I passed Rupert our invoice and he replied, I think we better take a look in the morning first, We arranged to meet at 10.00 am.

 

Continued