It's not easy (trying) to be green.
Written on March 13, 2009
To say it more accurately, Adam and I try to be ecologically concious members of the community but sometimes we just aren’t. I was reminded of this when Sarah from A Girl’s Guide to Greenovating a Chicago Townhouse asked about our refinished wood floors.
Although there are a lot of new low-VOC or no-VOC wood floor stains out there, there are very few homeowners or flooring contractors whom actually use these products. Green floor products are expensive + no flooring contractor will work with an unfamiliar stain. -It’s just too much of a liability for them. I actually found one contractor who has worked with a green stain, but their estimate for the job was twice as expensive as the average quote. Our options to refinish our floors ended up like this:
1. Do all the work ourselves.
- Rent a drum and edge sander from Home Depot + sand the floors ourselves = no cost factor, but a lot of labor.
- Obtain samples and test stains on floors.
- Stain the floors with the no-VOC Monocoat wood stain = no cost for labor, but an expensive stain ($100+ per gallon).
2. Do part of the work + hire a contractor.
- Hire a flooring contractor to sand and buff the floors in preparation to stain = no labor for us, but a high cost factor.
- Obtain samples and test stains on floors ourselves.
- Stain the floors with the no-VOC Monocoat wood stain = no cost for labor, but an expensive stain ($100+ per gallon).
3. Hire a contractor to do all the work.
- Due to our budget and time frame, we went this route of hiring a contractor who stained our floors in Royal Mahagony = a fair cost factor with a harsh impact on the environment.
- Unfortunately this is a common solution for most people.
For those of you who want to explore, here is a list of low-VOC or no-VOC wood flooring finishes:
Water Based Floor Finishes
- BonaKemi
- Bona Naturale
- Bona Traffic
- Bona Strong
- Bona Mega
- Basic Coatings
- Revotech
- Street Shoe XL
- Hydroline
- Emulsion
- Duraseal
- X-Terra
- Absolute Coatings
- Trek Plus
- Grand
Oil Based Floor Finishes
- BonaKemi
- Bioshield
- Woodline Poly Quarts
- Basic Coatings
- Oil Modified Urethane Quarts
- Duraseal
- Oil Modified Polyurethane Quarts
- Monocoat **Note: we did several test stains = saturation was not dark enough on our red oak.
- ZAR® Ultra Max Wood Stain
Stains
- BonaKemi
- DriFast Stain Quarts
- Duraseal
- Quick Coat Stain Quarts
- Penetrating Wood Finish Quarts
- Minwax
- Wood Finish Penetrating Stains
And just for jealousy’s sake: Baseco is a Swedish company that carries a gorgeous wood flooring line.
Filed in: Floors.
I don’t know how you could have missed the Zar line of stains & finishes made by UGL. They are the fastest & easiest to finish.Stain(either low-voc oil base or water-borne UltraMax stain)and finish 3 coats(oil base or water-borne finishes),very fast dry in one day.
Thanks Bob! I will add it to the list. I’d love to hear more about your experiences using this stain.
We’ve all been there! You have a home remodeling project you need completed, and you meet with various contractors to figure out how much the project will (or more importantly) should cost. But when you receive bids, the numbers are all over the map and the items included are vague at best. That’s where we come in! We sort through the confusion and put everyone on an even playing field, so you can compare your estimates
“Apples-To-Apples.”
Eco freindly waterbased floor coating are easy to find. Especially if your looking for the best.
Try ours! Lowest VOC levels in the industry with the longest wear expectancy.