A client bought a 50-yr old house and is renovating it. I’m building kitchen cabinets for him, and not directly involved in this problem, but I’ve watched it progress as I go about my job. He’s about at his wits end, so I thought I’d see if anyone has ever encountered this problem before.
He hired a guy to sand and refinish the oak strip floors. The floor guy applied some sort of oil-based polyurethane finish that apparently was defective. It seems to never have really cured. 2 coats applied, about 2 weeks go by, and the wierdest thing happens: all the cracks between the boards start to excrete little “boogers.” Small, sticky globs of finish pop up all over the floors.
We speculate that the finish was applied just before the weather warmed up, and as the floorboards swelled up in the heat and humidity, the boards pushing against each other squeezed out the uncured finish down in the cracks. It is really ugly. After waiting about 4 weeks to see if it would stop, it was still squeezing out these boogers.
Client decided to start over again. Had the floors re-sanded down to the bare wood. Applied a sealer coat. Applied one coat of water-borne polyurethane. The next day the boogers were starting to push up again underneath the new finish coat.
Client is about ready to kill the floor guy, or possibly himself. My advice to him weeks ago was to just live with the nasty floors for a season and let the stuff cure. THEN re-sand the floors. He couldn’t do that, and now he’s back to square one again.
Have you guys ever seen anything like this? The floor guy says he’s stumped (he’s not the greatest craftsman I’ve ever met). Any suggestions for a fix? Seems to me if you have wet finish down in the cracks that refuses to dry, you either have to find a way to dry it, or find a way to clean it out of the cracks. I can’t see how you’d do either one.
Replies
Could be that water based two-part coating. He forgot to add the second part. Now it won't cure and it swells the wood.
Post your question here -- I'm sure there was a similar topic a few months back but I disremember the answer.
IanDG
Thanks! I found a thread on the site about "Poly BBs", which apparently is not uncommon. Exactly the info I needed.
doug- it's called "polyurethane beading" and you now have to demo the floor to get rid of it
not the floor guy's fault, he got caught by the weather you named it, the humidity picked up, floor boards expanded and "pushed" the uncured poly upwards in the form of beads it can happen on a brand new floor installation, not just old work the sealer/waterborne coat they put on later probably won't add to the problem, the damage is already done
cure, IF poly content of floor allows it, is to rescreen and coat, or, resand and three coats which they have already done wet poly still beading up indicates that the stuff still down there ain't going away, and it's not going to cure
that suppleness of poly is also what makes it a good floor coating, it is flexible enough even when cured to move w the floor that's why guys who cheat w a first coat of lacquer screw up the floor a few years down the road the lacquer dries in an hour and they second coat the floor the first day, saving one return trip trouble is lacquer is a brittle finish, can't move w floor, over time it breaks, flecks up in small dots half the size of a tackhead these areas get soiled w no protective coat, resand is needed oilbase poly doesn't fully cure, so if a little extra goes down the seams as in your customer's home, humidity expansion is big trouble
it's demo time unless the beads are so limited that they can live with it
Yikes! DEMO the floor to get rid of the BBs? I'm sure glad I had nothing to do with the floor refinishing myself.
You might want to try Japan drier. This helps speed up the dry time.
This is not the same situation but, my grandfather had powdered cherry oil. We applied it to get a red stain that matched a floor. But for two week it would bleed. We wiped on Japan drier and it stoped.
It is worth the try. Better than rippin up the floor.