Polyurethane, the saga continues

So, the next morning it was truth time. Had it gone well? Were we going to do a third coat (like Matt wanted) or just quit there (which is what I was leaning towards.) I went to the house to take a look and I didn't think it looked that bad... at first. But the more I looked at it, the more worried I became. At first I thought, oh, its just a bit of bubbling, we can knock that down and do a third coat, not really what I wanted to do, but no big deal. But the more I looked at it, the more I thought, oh boy, we're in trouble. And my sinking feeling was only confirmed by Matt when he came by after work. We were, to put it nicely, f-ked.

As you can see from the images, we had some pretty severe bubbling. The more we looked, the more we found. And if you rubbed your hands over it, it was, sadly, like sandpaper. Not at all what we were going for. At this point, we were also facing a time problem. As in, it was almost time to move out of our rental and into our new place. And since we had chosen oil based poly, there was a 7 day window before we could put any furniture on it safely. So, we figured, it was time to call an expert. Because my mom is awesome, she agreed to help out and contact a few people. Miraculously, one of them was got back to us. After looking at the pictures, he thought it was dirt, and recommended that we buff it out with 120 grit and reapply. He also said he could come by to look after he complete is next job, in two days. So, being the go getter that I am, I went to check out a buffer.

Now, if you've never seen one, a buffer is basically a spinning disk on a stick. Plus there was the whole pad vs. screen debacle. Basically, a buffer, well, buffs. But at what grit is hard to figure out. Most of them come with colored pads, which are pretty but no one seems to want to translate that color into an actual grit, that would mean something to someone trying to achieve a goal. Now, screens have a grit, but most of the time they only come in grits that are very high, like 120 or above. And if you want to get something stronger, you have to special order. This place was no exception. I told them what I was looking for,and they were very helpful, but I still wasn't sure. 120 grit was the recommendation, and 120 grit was what they had, but could I make it work?

Well, luckily the guy at the shop suggested I try it out. After some very failed attempts in their show room, they ended up taking me out into the storage area in the back where the concrete was more plentiful. Basically, I spun in circles for 30 minutes until I finally got the hand of it. Whenever I turned it on, it would just man handle me into turning in a circle, quickly. But after some time, I learned that a gentle hand and some up/down touches, would almost let me control it.

So, I took my best guess at the screens/pads we would need, with the help from the guys at the store. and loaded up the buffer and headed home. But on the way home I started to have second thoughts. The book we had said you were supposed to buff in a very specific pattern, and I was pretty sure that although I had gained some control, it wasn't nearly enough for that. So we decided we'd wait and see what the expert had to say before attempting anything ourselves.