Didn't "make" it, but from Wednesday afternoon to Yesterday, I stripped part of my upstairs floors with carpet and shellac, scraped them (courtesy of tar-like film left by the carpet padding on the shellac and shellac's distastes for being sanded with a power sander that makes any heat). then sanded, stained and applied a solvent urethane.
We got a fair quote, but the floor refinisher wanted at least $4k, plus requested we store some furniture off site so that he would have a wide working window (add another couple of hundred bucks) and would use only water based products. Plus, he wanted an add on to do the hall. Not sure if he'd have wanted an upcharge if he found out the floor was shellac and not prior easy sanding urethane. In the end, it was easier to just do an end around and do it myself, and after sitting at a desk for my day job for 23 years so far, it was nice to get on the floor and get a bit sore.
Solvent products are becoming VOC restricted here and are really undesirable, but a brilliant woodworker/retired research chemist from another forum - Bill Tindall - helped me understand my options with the solvents available here to get this finish thinned (ended up using xylene) so that it would work much better.
I *bought* a floor sander rather than renting one, but it was about 1/8th of new used on CL and worked a treat the whole time other than needing to scrape. Very sparing on floor thickness, though - I doubt I removed a 32nd, and that appeals to me as the contractors here will usually take off a huge stripe of thickness with drum sanders and then follow with oscillating types. I guess that assures them that they'll get past any issues in the wood, but this floor has been sanded once before and I don't want to be blocked out of redoing it in the future if there is some kind of disaster.
By then, there will probably be a machine that would print a layer back on, though.
We got a fair quote, but the floor refinisher wanted at least $4k, plus requested we store some furniture off site so that he would have a wide working window (add another couple of hundred bucks) and would use only water based products. Plus, he wanted an add on to do the hall. Not sure if he'd have wanted an upcharge if he found out the floor was shellac and not prior easy sanding urethane. In the end, it was easier to just do an end around and do it myself, and after sitting at a desk for my day job for 23 years so far, it was nice to get on the floor and get a bit sore.
Solvent products are becoming VOC restricted here and are really undesirable, but a brilliant woodworker/retired research chemist from another forum - Bill Tindall - helped me understand my options with the solvents available here to get this finish thinned (ended up using xylene) so that it would work much better.
I *bought* a floor sander rather than renting one, but it was about 1/8th of new used on CL and worked a treat the whole time other than needing to scrape. Very sparing on floor thickness, though - I doubt I removed a 32nd, and that appeals to me as the contractors here will usually take off a huge stripe of thickness with drum sanders and then follow with oscillating types. I guess that assures them that they'll get past any issues in the wood, but this floor has been sanded once before and I don't want to be blocked out of redoing it in the future if there is some kind of disaster.
By then, there will probably be a machine that would print a layer back on, though.