Recoating kitchen bench with polyurethane finish

[JamesN]

Hi all,

I have a wooden kitchen bench which came from the old Railway station nearby. I am not sure what wood it is but it is starting to develop some cracks and in the areas of high use, the finish has worn off and is quite faded. I managed to find the product the previous owners of the house used in finishing the timber and it is an eco-friendly poly urethane. I would like to refinish the bench and was wondering what the best way to do it is. I have heard that polyurethane finished should be only lightly sanded before reapplication but would welcome any words of wisdom. I can supply photos if needed, just let me know.

I look forward to some responses.

Cheers,

JamesN

[Master Splinter]

Take back to bare timber and refinish, otherwise the worn areas run the risk of looking completely different to the unworn parts, and there's always the risk that the new finish won't stick well to the old finish.

[BobL]

The problem with a light sanding is it won't remove the dents and faded look. To do that you have to penetrate through the old finish to the wood. It parts of it are OK you don't actually need to remove all the old finish provided you stay with the same finish for the recoat.

I have recoated out kitchen bench top 3 times in 18 years - I use two pack Estapol 7008 polyurethane for floors because it is one of the hardest wearing but most flexible finishes. I'm very happy with it as it provides maximum protection for the timber. The eco poly is still pretty good but not quite as robust as the 7008.

As usual the real headache is not applying the finish but prepping the job and stopping the dust from making a complete mess as most vacuum cleaners either cannot catch all the dust or are incapable of filtering all the really fine dust and end up spewing out all over the place.
To help with the dust I used a blower/vac. I used a 4" Makita belt sander connected to the vac side and then connect the blower to another hose which I hung out the window so no dust remains in the kitchen. This makes life really easy. I used 60 grit belts to strip back the finish and 120 to smooth it all back. I used 4 coats of finish and then cut it back to a mat finish using 0000 steel wool and some natural wax.

Some pics and details here

[Horsecroft88]

The problem with a light sanding is it won't remove the dents and faded look. To do that you have to penetrate through the old finish to the wood. It parts of it are OK you don't actually need to remove all the old finish provided you stay with the same finish for the recoat.

I have recoated out kitchen bench top 3 times in 18 years - I use two pack Estapol 7008 polyurethane for floors because it is one of the hardest wearing but most flexible finishes. I'm very happy with it as it provides maximum protection for the timber. The eco poly is still pretty good but not quite as robust as the 7008.

As usual the real headache is not applying the finish but prepping the job and stopping the dust from making a complete mess as most vacuum cleaners either cannot catch all the dust or are incapable of filtering all the really fine dust and end up spewing out all over the place.
To help with the dust I used a blower/vac. I used a 4" Makita belt sander connected to the vac side and then connect the blower to another hose which I hung out the window so no dust remains in the kitchen. This makes life really easy. I used 60 grit belts to strip back the finish and 120 to smooth it all back. I used 4 coats of finish and then cut it back to a mat finish using 0000 steel wool and some natural wax.

Some pics and details here

But that actually is the whole point, the beauty with an old timber bench top, the marks, dings, scratchs, burn marks etc. Its called patina and hence you don't want to remove them, far from it in fact, these should be retained as marks of history of the timber and its uses over the years. From my point of view by all means sand it back using say 150 grade papers either by hand or at most with an orbital sander, and thereafter finish off with 240 or even up to 400 grade and then no don't use poly as it horrid stuff and in my view 2 pack is even worse still.

Go with something more environmentally friendly and more so for the timber itself and use a tung oil based finish like eg. Feast Watson's floor seal or otherwise Organoil hard burnishing oil. Both will provide a superb finish which is durable, will happily deal with both heat and water and best of all it does't end up with a lousy plastic finish.

Sorry if I offend anyone but I will never use Poly for anything. I also disagree completely re Poly being the hardest finish and most durable for floors. A Tung oil based finish will outlast Poly anyday and more so, it is so easy to fix if it gets a scratch or suffers from wear over time, unlike Poly finishes which require complete stripping back.

I have used such Tung oil based finishes on my benchtops both at home in the kitchen and bathroom as well as our country place, and I have only had to recoat the floor once in the past 10 years in high traffic areas (kitchen and hallway). The benchtop in the kitchen needs redoing but that is now some 11 years later.

[BobL]

But that actually is the whole point, the beauty with an old timber bench top, the marks, dings, scratchs, burn marks etc. Its called patina and hence you don't want to remove them, far from it in fact, these should be retained as marks of history of the timber and its uses over the years. . . .

I'm not much of a pantina lover and neither is SWMBO, but even if we were, unfortunately it's not a kitchen with enough character that is worth hanging onto or suits pantina. The bench top is Oregon which was a big mistake as it is as soft as butter. The kitchen still looks marginally OK from the outside but underneath it's a 1994 white painted MDF/chipboard cabinet work that is starting to swell and going mouldy (I guess this is also a kind patina ) so it will be luck to last another 5 years - I suppose that will be a total of 23 years of life, which is not that bad for a cheap kitchen these days.

While I like oiled wood as a texture much better than poly, I don't like the way oils darkens some woods like jarrah which we have on the floors throughout our house. I did consider using Tung oil on the floors but we were lucky to try it out first on some offcuts and it nearly went black. That would have been a big mistake in our house as it is very dark already. While the look is not ideal we are very happy with longevity of the poly we used and it has lasted very well (15+ years) in low traffic areas. Only the high traffic areas really need attention and that is mainly because we got two dogs in the last two years and they have tracked so much dirt and grime in, plus their nails and bones etc have made a mess of the floors in these areas. We will wait for another year or so until the dogs calm down a bit and them have these areas redone. Most of the floors especially in the high traffic areas are chocolate jarrah - this is old growth stuff that turns very dark under oils. While we have the floor finishers in we are considering redoing one of the bedrooms upstairs where the jarrah is lighter in colour and there are more windows, plus the dogs do not spend much time up there.

[Horsecroft88]

I'm not much of a pantina lover and neither is SWMBO, but even if we were, unfortunately it's not a kitchen with enough character that is worth hanging onto or suits pantina. The bench top is Oregon which was a big mistake as it is as soft as butter. The kitchen still looks marginally OK from the outside but underneath it's a 1994 white painted MDF/chipboard cabinet work that is starting to swell and going mouldy (I guess this is also a kind patina ) so it will be luck to last another 5 years - I suppose that will be a total of 23 years of life, which is not that bad for a cheap kitchen these days.

While I like oiled wood as a texture much better than poly, I don't like the way oils darkens some woods like jarrah which we have on the floors throughout our house. I did consider using Tung oil on the floors but we were lucky to try it out first on some offcuts and it nearly went black. That would have been a big mistake in our house as it is very dark already. While the look is not ideal we are very happy with longevity of the poly we used and it has lasted very well (15+ years) in low traffic areas. Only the high traffic areas really need attention and that is mainly because we got two dogs in the last two years and they have tracked so much dirt and grime in, plus their nails and bones etc have made a mess of the floors in these areas. We will wait for another year or so until the dogs calm down a bit and them have these areas redone. Most of the floors especially in the high traffic areas are chocolate jarrah - this is old growth stuff that turns very dark under oils. While we have the floor finishers in we are considering redoing one of the bedrooms upstairs where the jarrah is lighter in colour and there are more windows, plus the dogs do not spend much time up there.

Oh well Bob, that is where you and I completely differ, I am an old house (early colonial) and antique furniture lover, hence to me patina is gold. To wreck it is sacriligious in my view.

Hence in my two properties with their kitchens, even though completely rebuilt, they have been done with all old salvaged timbers including bench tops, my home's kitchen being old oregan and it looks fantastic, while the country house has an old kauri bench top, baltic lining boards for bench sides, Huon pine splashbacks/drawfronts. The floors being original wide Tas oak floor boards and treated with respect rather than obliterated to look brand new.

Each to their own of course re timbers and finishes used. As for MDF yuk,

No worries I understand what you are saying re jarrah, it is not a timber that is readily available down here in Tassie.

As for James' kitchen benchtops, well I guess perhaps the best thing might be try out some different finishes to work out what might suit him.

[BobL]

Oh well Bob, that is where you and I completely differ, I am an old house (early colonial) and antique furniture lover, hence to me patina is gold. To wreck it is sacriligious in my view.

I don't know if we are that different. I'm all for restoration if it's practical and affordable but given the patina we had to deal with and my various attempts at saving pantina largely ended up just looking dirty and daggy so we have instead gone for clean and liveable.

We have a 1918 tuck pointed brick and iron home with Oregon casement stained glass windows of old dutch scenes. When we bought it in the late 70's it had shagpile green carpet over 1940's asbestos linoleum tiles in the hall and kitchen and bedrooms, and lime green painted Oregon doors and Jarrah door frames. The walls were painted various neon colours and the wallpaper in one room was neon and silver paisley patterned and in another it was midnight blue. All relatively superficial and straightforward enough to fix but that was the easy part. The house was a 2 bed, one bath with internal bath heater, with a sagging back veranda and open to the elements lean-to laundry and leaning dunny, plus the iron roof needed replacing, and it needed a complete rewire and replumb. The bathroom had a rotting masonite floor and smoke tainted paint from the internal gas hot water system.

For a variety of reasons we had very little money until the mid 1990's so one of the first things we restored was the original tuck pointing which was in bad shape. We were fortunate enough to find a real craftsman who did a great job but it cost a lot of money and put a big hole in our budget. Then we desperately needed some space so we bit the bullet and renovated, adding a new kitchen, laundry/bath, living room and an upstairs bedroom, and converted the old kitchen into a bedroom and a former bedroom into a dining room. Reroofed, replumbed and rewired. The windows design in all the new rooms matched the design of the old except we could not afford oregon frames so we had to compromise on that. We maintained the same coloured bricks, 11ft ceiling heights, plaster ceiling patterns and 115 mm jarrah floorboards through the entire addition - what we could not afford was the dream kitchen so once again we went for structural integrity and relegated the things that could be changed later to a lower priority.

This is a shot of our bedroom during the renovation so you can see the stained glass windows - see how dark the floors are - they would be black if we used tung oil.
Jarrah and Oregon window frames were stripped back to bare wood - patina consisted of dozens of different holes where different curtain fixtures were used - these were filled but are still visible on closer inspection
The bedhead is pale Jarrah made by yours truly and that is natural wax finished.
The oak dresser was a restoration done by FIL one of many he has given us.


This is what we did with the old kitchen which had 7 layers of leaded paint and a patina that consisted of gummy cooking oil with side orders of mouse and roach chewed wood and paint.
I bricked up the 1940's era gas stove opening and installed an old tiled fireplace.
The jarrah window and door frames restored - once again full of old screw and nail holes
The original sink was under the window and the tap actually went thru the middle upright of the window frame - hole filled but still clearly visble. There were many unfilled holes in the floor in this room from different plumbing rearrangements and some floorboards had to be replaced.
Window casements are original oregon but are not the same pattern as the rest of the house - still need to be stripped back.
Through the middle door you can see the green walled hall and through to our bedroom - the little door is a built in pantry. There would have been no door into that - just a curtain (holes for curtain rod are still there) that door would have been maybe added in the 60's
There were no original skirting boards left anywhere in the old part of the house (just crappy 1/4 rounds) so I made all new 19 x 75 mm splayed skirts (that match the door frames) for all the old rooms and 19 x 150 mm splayed skirts for the hall.
The dresser and wardrobe are children's 1940's era WA sheoak pieces painted white by someone in the ~1960s and they will be restored back to natural timber WIGRTI


This is the old lounge room with the original plaster ceilings
Smoked glass and paisley wallpapered fireplace chimney replaced with another restored relevant era fireplace and jarrah fireplace surround.
The door is an original Oregon door which was one of those painted lime green - various chemical attempts at removing the lime green paint resulted in severe bleaching of the oregon.
The greyish-green looking bleached wood look awful so we tried various stains but could not recover anything close to oregon so this is what we ended up with - not the best but better than bleached wood.
The jarrah bookcases were custom made for us by Fremantle Furniture company in 1979 and were the first real pieces of furniture we bought
Once again note how dark the floors are.




In 2002 I redid the study which was originally part of the front veranda but we believe was converted to an unlined sleepout some time in the 1950's. We probably should have removed it completely but we had nowhere else for a study. I had to level the stumps and the floor and I used recycled 115 mm wide jarrah floorboards. Once again note how dark they are.
The 2.3 x 3.3 x 1.8 m desk is again by yours truly and is made of solid 35 mm thick chocolate jarrah slabs. The cupboards supporting the desk was made out of floor board offcuts.
If I was doing this again I would make the desk out of Marri which is much lighter and would have contrasted much better with the dark floor boards.


In 2004 I built our attic in the ceiling space of the old part of the house - this involved re-routing the wiring and moving a number of structural roof support components and then installing a drop down ladder in the hall.
The dark wooden beams are the original jarrah rafters left natural
The floor is recycled Wandoo (man is this hard stuff - every nail hole had to be drilled for this) from a school. I could have left the patina in the wood but I did sand and water based poly coated this floor.
The days I sanded and finished the floor it was over 38º in the attic and many of my sweat drops can still be seen under that finish (I guess that is a kind of patina) its not the best job but its more than enough for what is really a storage space
Everything except the floor was Tek screwed because my son was doing shift work at the time and he couldn't sleep if I was hammering.
When they demolish the house the attic will probably stay in one piece.
The twin triangle opening in the end wall if for a window also WIGRTI.


So I hope this gives you some idea where I am coming from. Where we could afford it we have stayed close to original materials and designs and we believe we have really enhanced what was a very run down humble, dark cottage into a much brighter and more liveable place. The paint colours we chose are amongst the brightest from the era palate - probably used in an unusual way but we think they cheer the place up significantly. The sad thing is that about half the houses in our street were like ours but instead of being retired they have been knocked down and replaced with Mcmansions and that is almost certainly what will happened to ours when we go.

[Horsecroft88]

Hi Bob, my sincere apologies for now I can see where you are coming from. Yes you are correct, we are not so far apart in our ideas and having likewise spent the last 20 odd years restoring both my 1850s cottage (home in the city) as well as over the past 6 years my heritage listed 1826 farmhouse, I too know and very much understand the journey you have taken with your home. Which by the way seeing your photos is a real credit to you.

A lack of funds, and a necessity to do as much as I and/or my wife can physically achieve is much akin to what you also have achieved.

Thankyou for the clarification. I have posted a number of photos of the work we have been doing on our country property in my somewhat lengthy thread on various furniture restoration projects. Truthfully I am a heritage nut and slave to shellac and bees wax polish.

I think the thing is there is too frequently the need to have the trade off between what is desired vrs what is practical and achievable. We have 5 cats and sadly to say, french-polished antiques and joinery suffer at the claws of our fur children. But I kind of accept this and try to limit their damage in order to satisfy my need to have polished wooden surfaces.

I very much appreciate the time you have taken to show me the results of all your hardwork. I wish I too could show more of what we have achieved with our homes, but I seem to be unable to load photos from my desktop at work and sadly the majority of my photos are stored on that computer.

Kind regards David

[BobL]

No worries David.

Wow! 1850 and 1826 is pretty amazing especially being heritage listed. I'd definitely be keeping any patina associated with those.

I find it hard enough to try keeping on top of one property so unless we had the $$ I think I would find more than one (even mentally) a bit of a nightmare. SWMBO had dreams of a place in the country for her horse but thankfully that kinda died after seeing what some of her friends went through to maintain two properties. We have some good friends that have 300 acres of very pleasant farmland, a spacious, dedicated and very well fitted out woodwork shed, plus an empty second house on the farm that we can access pretty well anytime - but its a 5 hour drive away and I'd rather be working in my shed.

Recently I found myself hankering for a more isolated property because I attended several blacksmithing courses and got the bug and just had to build myself a forge. Of course living on a small suburban block a mile from central perth doesn't really allow for an authentic charcoal forge so I had to compromise with small a gas powered unit. Now there's a craft with some history/patina/magic behind it. I really wish I had started on this earlier in life.

[Horsecroft88]

Hi Bob

I know what you mean but in one sense down here in Tassie, there are plenty of "old" properties given that Tassie was the second state to be colonised after NSW. But yes 1826 is definitely pretty early even for here. The cost, the maintenance and the time involved in having multiple properties, especially old ones is definitely taxing in so many ways. The intention had been to live out at the country place and rent out the city one, it just hasn't happened to date as there has been so much work to be done to the country place to make it habitable. It still isn't and we have had it now for about 6 years !! One day perhaps, but at least I am preserving/restoring it faithfully.

It has only become even more complex as the other half had to move to Sydney this year for work, so I have even less time between my work, maintenance on our home let alone going to Sydney every 2-6 weeks to see her on weekends to have much time to work on the country place. At least though we only have 2 acres of land out there, but that is sufficient for the time being.

Blacksmithing, wow that is a serious past-time. I am impressed, I wouldn't even know where to begin re this.

Might have to now leave the thread hi-jack and give it back to James, as I suspect we have by now gone a fair way off his original topic.