Project: Engineered Oak Flooring Sanded & Finished in Whitewash & Raw / Invisible Lacquer

Before the works

The oak engineered wood flooring in this Worcester Park home had suffered mould surface damage due to being covered with correx over a lenghty building renovation works. Condensation can appear below the correx and create conditions for mould, which unfortunately can only removed with floor sanding.

During our free home survey, we did thorough inspection of the floors and discussed with the client all possible options. Our client has decided to go for gap filling, one coat of whitewash and finishing the floors in raw / invisible lacquer.

How we did it...

Engineered flooring planks come in 3 main standards of thickness, which also defines how thick is the available for sanding oak top layer of the product. Depending on the overall condition of the floors, the initial floor sanding may start with coarser or medium grid. The task of this stage is not only to remove the previous finish and get the floors to bare wood, but also to provide a good level throughout the entire floor. In the case of engineered wood flooring, the level of the floor is usually good, due the "click" or "tongue-and-groove" locking between the planks.

Sanding the floors with fine grids (80 - 120 gr) and a good rotary buff to the new oak timber surface with high grid buffing screens is the most important stage in the preparation of the parquet flooring for finishing.

One way of achieving whitewashed finish with lacquer is using a white tinted primer. One or more coats of the primer can be applied to increase the solidness of the colour.

Floors were consequently sealed with single coat of white tinted primer and 2 coats of Bona Mega Natural - a water-based lacquer with invisible / raw look with light screen buff between the coats, for an excellent final touch to the finish.