Left side is the naked wood as you buy it; right side is one coat of satin finish varnish. When it is bone dry de-nib it with one of the fine sanding things I showed you in a previous post. You must do this with every piece of wood you ever paint or varnish if you want a decent finish.
I then repeated this, i.e. a coat of varnish, an overnight dry, then de-nib. At the end of that I went over it with my favourite mid-tan shoe polish to soften the colour and to put some 'dirt' between the boards.
Here's the finished job in the children's den. I can put the doors in place when I have done the floor next door. I can fit the coving to 'tidy' the ceiling join when I've painted it. The skirting boards always need to be left until the eleventh hour because sometimes you might want a built-in cupboard or a piece of furniture that you don't want sticking away from the wall and it is a pig (like in real life) hacking out something from that or trying to hack out the skirting for a neat fit. So just be patient and be sure how much of it you want where.
Handy tip: floorboards generally run away from the doors. Not easy when you have several doors into a room. Absolutely your choice but I like them this way and I like them running across my house, not front to back.
The floor has come up really nicely ~ just goes to show that with a bit of patience and elbow-grease, the "cheaper" ranges can look really good.
ReplyDeleteIt really is simple and quick to do other than the usual waiting for it to dry and, as you say gives a good result. You could use a wtaer based quick dry varnish like mine but with a colour in and that looks lovely. These boards also paint up beautifully with the Cuprinol shades paint. All round food egg. marilyn
DeleteFor food egg read good egg! Don't you just love iPad on lap typing...
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