As I discussed in my prior post on refinishing your hardwood floor, you now need to varnish it. When you begin refinishing and varnishing your hardwood floor, make sure that you match your varnish to the wood in the rest of your house. For instance, if you are only doing a kitchen, you will need to match the varnish to your other hardwood floors. If you are doing the whole house just choose the varnish you like. Your local hardware store will have lots of choices.
Tip – don't buy too much varnish, it goes a lot further than you think. Eyeballing your square footage wouldn't be a bad idea either.
Varnish comes in the form of a stain and a finish. Once you have chosen your varnish, you will need several items: (1) several old rages; (2) a paint tin to place the varnish in, (3) a pole sander.
Place the varnish in the paint tin and sop it up with a clean rag. Dip the rag lightly in the varnish and begin rubbing the varnish into the wood in even with the grain strokes. Don't leave wetness behind. Also, don't paint yourself into a corner.
Keep an additional dry rag handy for going over the wet varnish after you have rubbed the varnish into the wood. Do this throughout the entire floor area you are refinishing. Pay attention to detail.
After the first coat of stain dries, you need to use your long-handle sander to buff off the first layer of varnish slightly. This is an easy process and you don't need to put too much muscle grease into it. Just take it easy. Once you have sanded it, you can stain again if you want to or go directly to finish.
Once you complete the first stain, you can do one of two things: (1) sand and apply more stain to make it as dark as you want or, (2) sand and apply finish. Depending on what stain and finish you buy, you may have to wait longer or extra applications of each. Don't worry, this doesn't take that long. Also, you should wait twelve hours between applying each coat of the finish.
After the first finish application goes on, your floor should start to look really cool and you can feel proud of yourself and all the money you saved. Once you put the second coat of finish on, it needs to dry for seven days without anything on it. You can probably walk lightly on it a couple times, but just take it easy. If you are doing your kitchen, make plans for how you are going to eat food for a couple days because the fridge is likely to be near wet varnish and sealant for a while.
Once you have waited a week – put stuff on your floor, take pictures, enjoy!
TOTAL PROJECT PRICE FOR REFINISHING HARDWOOD FLOOR: $200-$250
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