You can sand down any old wooden floor – woodblock, mosaic woodstrip or floorboards – but it is almost certain that if you hire a sanding machine you will be working on floorboards, which may have curled at the edges and suffered considerable surface damage after years of use.
PREPARING THE FLOOR
The first thing to do [...]
Whether laying wood mosaic flooring or strip flooring, the first job is to prepare the floor.. Solid floors may need damp-proofing and the application of a self-levelling compound; suspended timber floors will need to be made good and then covered with hardboard or plywood sheets to make them flat New concrete floors should be left [...]
Chips and holes in a varnished or french polished surface can be built up by applying a ‘touch-in’ of the same finish in the depression, letting it dry, and adding more until you bring it level. For huge gashes, make cellulose ‘jam’ by pouring a capful of cellulose lacquer into a tin lid, letting it [...]
For raw wood, especially hardwoods, the penetrating stains or dyes are a better bet than pigmented stains. They are most commonly found on the market in an oil (naphtha) medium, whose solvent is white spirit. They are absorbed more evenly because they penetrate deeper into the wood, but, because of their penetration, it is more [...]
Although you can use mops, brushes and spray guns for french polish, by far the most important method of application is with the rubber. This is no more than an absorbent pad, but making a good one and mastering its behaviour are essential to good french polishing.
Take a piece of cotton wadding, about 25cm (l0in.) [...]
A favourite finisher’s tool, the cabinet scraper is merely a rectangular piece of tool steel which can take four sharp edges. It will produce a smooth cut, however wild the grain is, which is why it is indispensable for work on veneers with decorative, curly grain. To use the scraper, hold it in both [...]
If the wood itself is not damaged beyond the scope of a filler or stopper, but the finish has generally deteriorated, there are numerous remedies.
For localized problems like shallow scratches, try furniture polish, shoe polish, or even the kernel of a nut to wet, darken and blend the lighter area. Often it is only a [...]