Mike and I spent last week working on staining the floors of the cottage.
We scrubbed the floor with a buffer with 220 cleaning pad. We scrubbed the floor and then rinsed it with clean water. We let the floor dry over night and the next morning we chemically etched the concrete and again washed the floor with clean water.
Even with the house only a little over 1000 sq. ft., it took several hours to do these 2 steps. We again let the floor dry completely to show any places where we did not get the etching right. During the etching process the floor is to be kept wet and not allowed to dry. So, we were constantly adding water to the floor. Many gallons of water was used.
The next day we stained the floor with an acid stain applied liberally to the complete floor.
We knew there might be a problem when large areas of white patches appeared later in the day. We let the stain stay on the floor over night and began the process of neutralizing the acid and cleaning the excess acid from the floor then next day. This time we used a wet/dry vacuum to extract the water instead of using a floor sqweegy to push the water out of the doorways.. Again a lot of water was used.
We again knew we had a problem when the white patches were not the same color as the rest of the floor. When it was still wet we thought that it might be ok to just leave it as the white patches had some color in them. But the next day when the floor was completely dry, the color was not visible in the patches.
Mike decided that we could add stain the colorless patches, so we hope to try that process on Tuesday.
We followed the directions to the tee, and even called the manufacturer for some advice. The only thing that we can figure what went wrong is that we left too much etching residue on the floor and the stain reacted with that instead of the floor itself.
We are going to retry the staining and neutralizing process again and hope for the best.
We are trying to not use a floor covering, as staining is more durable and will not have to be replaced any time soon.
Ta ta for now.
1 comment:
Oh no! We have talked about etching and staining the floor on the new screen porch - so I will be anxious to hear if you are able to fix the problem. I sure you are able to get the white areas to stain the same as the rest of the floor. Looking forward to seeing your next step!
Post a Comment