Floorcraft

Thanks for all the birthday wishes and thank you for the Floorcraft referral for sand and finish floor work in Alexandria. Who was that? Nano technology with Aluminum Oxide in the wear layer is now available with sand in place & finish floors. Yay.

Happy to install a 100 watt flexible solar panel for charging new LFP battery to upgrade hydraulic dump trailer with less charging if any with free sunshine. Amazon 80 dollars for solar panel and 40 for mppt controller. 109 dollars for 100AmpHour 12 volt on Temu was lowest around for this smart battery with standard BMS (Battery Management System). Quick disconnect cables for battery with 10 feet of extention to solar panel was about 60 for the various connections to the MPPT controller. Solar panel voltage check on open circuit (no load) was 12.6 in the kitchen and surpassed name plate rating in the sunshine at 23.2 volts. I would pay somebody to let me have this much fun or at least be happy to work for free. It's the future. Next up Lithium Sodium and then donut wheel motors with twice the power per wheel and one third the weight of conventional EV electric motors like Teslas. Way too much fun one person.

Who likes beveled edges in their prefinished Oak floor boards? Even the microbevels, like this floor originally had, are less popular than the "gold standard" of floors sanded flat. The bevels sanded down in this floor were small compared to the big old ugly bevels of years gone by. This 20 year old townhouse in Kingstowne, VA had some of the bevels unevenly removed on a previous sanding. The 'natural' finish, meaning no stain, has a slight tint or amber and looks more like an oil base finish by using the water base AmberSeal by Bona so that the Red Oak color pops instead of looking bleached out. Happy Holidays.

my blurb about floors from my Insiders presentation today...Matching Oak floors, stair treads and hand railing are an important part of quality interior decorating. Oak floors are preferable for wide boards in order to have dimensional stability especially from high humidity that varies from season to season as wood shrinks and expands with higher or lower moisture content. Hard woods such as Maple, Birch or Hickory are not as dimensionally stable. Stains come in multiple shades which allows for good coordination with wall paints and kitchen cabinets. The two types of floor finish are water base & oil base. Water base is more expensive especially for 2 part commercial finishes for use in high traffic areas. Oil and water have pros and cons that are complicated and best determined by the specific job. An Oil base finish also known as Polyurethane (somewhat of a misnomer) is most popular in Virginia for cost, appearance and other technical reasons but is illegal in California due to the high VOC content and the availability of environmentally friendly water base finishes.