The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
House Painting
Floor-Finishing
Probably the easiest thing to do with a floor is to paint it; a floor-paint should have a very elastic varnish for its vehicle. It is necessary that a floor-paint should dry hard and quickly, because floors must be painted frequently, and we cannot wait long for them to dry. By the use of arnish we can make a floor-paint that will dry in twelve to twenty-four hours, be water-proof, and glossy. If we make an ordinary oil-paint dry as quickly by adding driers, it is so much affected that it is not as durable as it should be; and if we do it partly by using turpentine, it diminishes the necessary amount of binder. The country painter adds to ordinary oil-paint a liquid which he buys under the seductive name of "floor paint hardener"; this is a cheap rosin varnish loaded to the last degree with driers, and is in about every rational way the worst stuff known in the whole paint business. No rosin varnish should be used on any of the woodwork of a house, least of all on the floor. The varnish should be a good Kauri varnish, or its equivalent. It ought to contain about twenty gallons of oil to the hundred pounds of resin; it will need some drier, more than an ordinary interior varnish, but its quick drying is not to be obtained by diminishing the amount of oil, or the paint will chip and flake off. An ordinary paint will do for a floor if two or three months can be allowed for it to dry.
Kitchen floors are usually painted, but it is usual to varnish or wax the other floors in the better class of houses. In such cases, if the house is building, it is very desirable to leave the surfacing floor (for all floors should be double) unlaid until the last thing; after the plastering and painting are done, there will be little danger of its being injured, and then it may be laid and immediately varnished. If the floor is of oak or other open-grained wood, it is customary to fill the pores with a siliceous paste-filler, as has been described for other work; if close-grained, no treatment is needed. Now we have choice of three finishes. First, the use of an oleo-resinous floor-varnish; this should contain about eighteen gallons of oil to the hundred pounds of good hard varnish resin, as good in quality as No. 1 Kauri. This may be applied directly to the floor, and the first coat will sink in and be absorbed by the wood. We may, if we like, first fill the pores of the wood with linseed oil; there is but one objection to this, which is that it darkens the wood; it becomes somewhat darker immediately, but keeps darkening for some time. Anything containing linseed oil grows darker with age, — that is, any transparent wood-finish. And so it is true that an oleo-resinous varnish darkens the wood somewhat.
