Craftsman Style Blog

Matt asks about a varnishing problem.

Hi,

Do you answer questions on craftsman problems?

I live in a Victorian Terrace house, and when I moved in we took up the carpets and cleaned the floors up before sanding and varnishing them. The floor boards are original yellow pine.

There is one floor board causing a problem, it is situated in the divide between the living and dining room archway (and would be very difficult to remove and replace.) It doesn’t take the varnish very well and seems to have some kind of reaction to the varnish, turning a milky colour and drying out, whereas the other boards all kept their sheen. However, I kept applying coat after coat and eventually the one troublesome board looked like the others and stopped drying out.

2 years later the water based varnish (bournseal) had not stood the test of time. I decided to lightly re-sand over the floor boards and reapply an oil based varnish (Ronseal Diamond Hard). I followed the instructions exactly as the tin said and all the floor boards look lovely, except this one troublesome board. As with the first time, I kept applying coat after coat and it kept reacting, after several coats I gave up and decided to leave it for a week or so, nothing changed it stayed milky and dried out, later blistering. I then stripped the board back to bare wood, applied two coats of a light PVA water mix and allowed to dry. I then varnished the board again (once dry), initially it looked ok, but later dryed out, went milky and blistered. Help!!