Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Got Wood?

That Bellawood is describing their wood surface coating as a 100 year, aluminum oxide finish.
Our problem, like many others, we have dogs.
Dog nails DESTROY wood floors.
BUT, most laminate products have an aluminum oxide surface which the nails cannot penetrate.

If Bellawood puts that surface over top of real wood, then i'm already a fan of the product (assuming #2 that they buy wood from sustainable source producers).

When we bought ours, the boxes said 50 year protection, so maybe they have made some improvements, but I think it has a lot to do with the hardness of the wood underneath the coating. This santos mahogany is the hardest wood I've ever worked with and the area at our computer desk is showing signs of indentations and light scratches, but the surface coating is holding up well. We have some neighbors that also installed Bellawood flooring - cherry I think - and they have a dog. Even with the hard coating, their floor is trashed.

I'm in tons of different houses every year. I see lots of surfaces that surprise me or disappoint me.

With some exceptions, if a product has a name that prefixes the word 'wood,' one should pause. Screw Bob Vila. He's getting 6 figures a year for his name on that product alone! I'd shill for covering my floors in 3" of dryer lint for six figures---every year!

In the long run, the real thing will give you lots more options in the future to address its eventual (and inevitable) finish-wear problems.

Also, real (solid-3/4") wood that's a bit beat up will still look better than a mfgr'd. product equally distressed. Or go with something that looks good beat up, like Southern Yelllow Pine, or reclaimed, etc.

And remember, the darker the wood (or stain color), or the glossier the finish, the more it will show scratches and gouges.

And hence the problem with dog nails and any wood product (you should see our low window sills at the front of the house).

There are only two ways that i see around the problem.
Either you have a light coloured floor such as the maple (or other wood unstained) such that the dog nail scratches won't show up against a dark finish; or you get a laminate floor.

It is likely we will choose the laminate flooring since we will always have a dog and won't be putting in a light colour wood. We put laminate in the basement and people have asked if it was real wood. It has a surface texture that is deceiving. It is a Tarkett 'hand scraped' product.

Now what to choose when we change out our present all wood windows. Interior colours of PVC are limited to white or almond, neither of which goes with our house, or we get all wood again or a wood laminate interior finish (again subject to dog nails on the lower windows).

Then again, there's always marble, granite, tile, slate, etc. You could even terrazzo the sills. Concrete?

Chess, maybe you don't have a materials dilemma. Maybe you have a canine behavior dilemma?

You could do 'em in wood and keep an 8' length of matching wood, already finished, around.

Cut fake top sills so that they fit really snuggly over the real sills, or 18 ga. 'em in. When they get trashed, flip 'em over. When that gets ruined, go cut off another length and replace.

Other solutions:

*Rubber-bottomed knit mittens
*Adopt a very short or disabled dog
*Learn to appreciate the design possibilities of barbed wire.
*Board up the windows, only 1/2 way though

A final serious solution: Paint. It's the easiest thing to quickly and completely repair.

Ulitmate solution arrived at by having four: Get over it. All of it. You live with a dog!

Oh i hear you Bob.
We've thought about all these options.
Unfortunately dog training only goes so far unless you have 8h a day to make a police dog type dog. Keeping them from occasionally putting paws up on a low lying window as rabbits, squirrels and birds run by is a tough thing to train into a creature whose nature is to chase these things.
Knowing that is why we are trying to consider some more sturdy options for the sills and trim of the affected windows as they get replaced over the next few years.

Wood doesn't work as it splinters, although fairly easy to repair. Our daughter took a splinter under the fingernail the other day so we really have to consider something to avoid mishaps with the younger son. That aside, wood windows need alot of exterior maintenance compared to anything else and they are the most expensive; so that option is just not going to happen.
PVC is tough but limited for interior colours.
A wood veneer over PVC (what they term here as a hybrid window) is likely going to be our choice since small repairs are easy and in the long term, a new veneer could be placed overtop, or the whole sill replaced while keeping the window pane (reduced cost compared to replacing the whole window).

Selection of household finishes has in part revolved around having dogs. The problem has never been options for colours or style but usually more related to material type (until i started looking at the limited options for windows).
I quite like some of the laminate floors. Some look very real and also have texture. Although a real wood floor still looks like the better wood in comparison, i'll take a laminate floor instead because i would rather have a dog than a pristine looking real wood floor.

Question because I never worked with Cherry before.
I thought that might get your attention.

I am building a large frame for a friends oil painting, 36x42ish. She wanted it created in cherry which I have never worked in before. I picked out the best board I could find but when I planed it clean, I realized what a strong variation there is in color in cherry wood. The light and dark areas have a really strong contrast.

She choose Cherry because she wants a very particular particular wood/stain color that she saw on a much smaller photo frame but I can't see how she is going to be able to get even coloring on this much larger project now matter how I plan my cuts.

I'm leaning on a tung oil or shellac to highlight the contrasting colors instead of trying to hide it (which will likely be unsuccessful with a stain.) This will give it more of a funky look but the painting is a bright, funky, modern art kind of deal anyways.

A high gloss black paint was also suggested for the classy look but I could have used cheap old high density MDF for that. In the end it will be her choice.

Thoughts?

So this is your cherry cherry?

That's it. Got nothing helpful. Bob will be along to make us all feel inadequate soon anyway.

Murph: Unless you choose a fairly perfectly colored piece of cherry, you're gonna get color variations that can run from cream to brown.

The best way to color it is with wood dyes, not stains.
If you want more info about dyes/stains, PM me.

Shellac will change the cherry (depending on the shellac's base color). It usually adds (amber) yellow, thus making cherry look orange (eeew).

I have made frames (and some none-too-simple ones) out of MDF. If you mud all the cut edges with a vinyl spackle (like Crackshot) and sand them before priming, you can achieve an amazingly seamless look that will never reveal itself as MDF. Then you can do black or whatever color you like. (Or just use poplar or maple instead of MDF and make your life easy.)

Coloring wood is more difficult than most woodworking projects.

i.e.: sand up to 180 grit; 1st dye (One color dye or stain usually doesn't look natural), sanding sealer, sand, stain or 2nd dye, sanding sealer, sand, 3 coats of wipe-on poly, steel wool and wax
(not Butchers or any floor wax). Viola! [sic]

MDF and paint is lookin' awfully good, now, eh?

Lotta work.

Is she cute?