Blog revival...catching up on flooring and cabinet finishes

It's been quite sometime since my last post. A lot has happened in the last 17 months! Perhaps the most exciting event was the near completion of our home and our eventual move into the house. Near completion? That's right - it's still not done (even after living here for 12 months) due to the incompetence and negligence of our inept builder. This is has been a very long and painful journey that has yet to come to a conclusion. My lack of blog posts were mainly due to increased time commitments on the house and my refusal to relive each frustrating event by writing about them in the blog. But I won't leave you hanging! I'm now at a place were I can comfortably resume the posts and relive the experience without having my blood pressure exceed nominal levels.

So let me get you caught up on what happened in August 2012...

We had a come to Jesus meeting with our builder about the exterior cypress. After only one summer of being installed, it already looked horrible and had splitting and warped boards. The cypress had been installed directly onto the house over the house wrap. There was no air gap between the house wrap and the siding boards. How did I know an air gap was needed? Well, I spent about 50 hours researching siding construction techniques. I never once came across a recommended installation where the siding was flat up against the house wrap. What we decided to do was rip it all down, install ice and water shield, and then install new cypress siding. Thin, pressure-treated furring strips were first installed vertically on stud centers to create the air gap and provide a substrate to which the siding would be nailed.  We also decided to use a solid stain and pre-stain all four sides prior to installation. The siding didn't get replaced for another month or two and I agreed to pay for the ice and water shield. I'll have some exterior pics in later posts and I'll revisit how the new siding turned out.

The custom cabinetry went in before and after the oak floors got installed. I came up with a nice way to save money and have a good look to the floors. Most people want wide plank floors these days. We are no exception although I prefer the look of random width floors. This had a pretty steep up-charge that we really couldn't afford at this stage. So I got creative with what we had available. The local supplier carries 2-1/4", 3-1/4", and 5" wide 3/4" thick oak flooring. The costs were $2.39, $2.59, and $2.89, respectively. Rather than going with all 5" boards, we used this pattern:

5", 3.25", 2.25",5, 2.25",3.25"

For the most part, this looks like random with flooring. And since there is quite a bit of smaller width board in there, the cost per square foot worked out to about $2.69. I know $0.20 is that much savings but it actually helped us keep this one line item in budget. The only snag we hit with flooring was that the builder purchased and installed red oak when we asked for white. It has no impact on the look, but white oak is slightly harder and I wanted the extra durability (even if miniscule). But getting my builder to actually do what we want must have been too much to ask.

Here's how the floors turned out after staining.

The most time consuming part of August was spent on the cabinet finishes and the how the stairs were going to be constructed. I'll save the latter for the next post. The finishes for cabinets was tricky, but it was a lot of fun and quite the learning experience. I really geeked out on this part and became a bit of a control freak. In my defense, my builder and the painter really gave me no choice here. Apparently giving them picture of a wood finish and asking them to replicate it is too much to ask. They needed specifics on which stain brand and color. This meant I had to go out and find what I wanted. Where to start?

I first asked the cabinet guy for scrap wood from my cabinets. Luckily he had plenty and we used maple for all the cabinets so I didn't need to worry about different wood species. Then I headed to the woodworking store to see what they had. Luckily, I live a couple of miles from Highland Woodworking in Atlanta. This is one of the best woodworking stores around. They have everything you need and they are extremely knowledgeable and helpful. After, about three trips and three hours of conversations, I came home with about $150 worth of products to try.

I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted, but no idea how I was going to get there. For the kitchen, I wanted something with a slight orange tint. Beth thought I was crazy and she we ready to nix the idea before I even got the first stain on the board. For the upstairs bathrooms, I wanted something natural looking that brought out the beauty of the maple with altering it's character too much. So I went to staining and quickly had about 12 different color patches on a large piece of scrap. They looked great and then they dried and looked like crap. Why? First off, the grain of maple is already pretty subtle. Putting stain on it doesn't help and some stains even mute the grain even more. So I needed a way to bring out the grain and provide the color I was looking for.

Long story short, I read two books on wood finishing and tried a number of different techniques and finally got exactly what I was looking for. I forgot to mention, one of the reasons grain matters so much to me is because I had the cabinet maker use maple plywood for all the doors. And I had him cut as many doors as possible out of the same piece so the grain would run horizontally from door to door.

So here are the recipes, I ended up giving to the painter:
1. Kitchen - Single coat of Varathane Summer Oak stain. Two coats of boiled linseed oil mixed with an equal part of mineral spirits, let dry for 24 hours between coats. After 3 days of drying, apply satin lacquer.
Let me explain the boiled linseed oil (BLO) and mineral spirits. Linseed helped enhance the grain quite a bit and gave the wood a richer look. Boiled linseed oil by itself takes a really long time to dry so cutting it with mineral spirits cuts the drying time a lot. Applying lacquer over a BLO mixture is not that typical. I found a couple of resources that said don't do it. However, the finishing expert over at  Highland Woodworking said it was fine as long as we let the oil dry long enough. After almost 18 months with this finish, I can attest that this works fine.

Here's the finished product in the kitchen. By the way, Beth loved the finished and that orange tint wasn't such a crazy idea after she saw the samples.

2. J&J Bathroom - Getting a natural look out of wood isn't as easy as I thought. I tried a natural stain, but it just wasn't what I was looking for in the maple. I found a really great product to give a natural look - Bullseye Seal Coat. This dewaxed shellac. It's easy to apply and doesn't alter the color. Two coats of that followed by satin lacquer got us this:

3. Master bath - unlike the J&J bath, the master bath is large and the cabinets are viewed at somewhat of distance. For that reason, I wanted to bring out the grain, but I wanted to maintain the natural look like we did in the other bathroom. The BLO and mineral spirits are perfect for this. Rather than doing two coats like we did in the kitchen, we went with three allowing 24 hours of drying between coats and 3 days before applying the lacquer.

You might notice a little yellowing with this finish. That's typical when using BLO. And it will probably get more yellow over time. So far they look good and the yellow isn't very noticeable.

That's about it for August. On the side, I've been working with the architect on the interior stairs. This is my favorite part of the house so I'll be doing a post dedicated to the stairs. These stairs are one of kind so don't miss that post!