Tread Carefully

Awhile back, we ordered hickory stair treads.  We ordered them from a place that claimed to have a special UV cured finish that is really hard and durable.  Sounds great for stair treads.  It took some months for the treads to come in and when they did, we were terribly disappointed.  While the inch thick wood is beautiful, the finish was junk.  Like actual junk was stuck in the finish, it wasn’t smooth, and rather than UV cured, it looked gummy and bubbly like a poly coat.  If I had known, I would have simply ordered unfinished treads.  To their credit, the owner agreed to give me a 50% refund and we set about figuring out how we could refinish these ourselves.  

Talking to our local specialty lumber yard was educational.  We could pay them to remove the coating and refinish them.  The gentleman we talked to is a furniture craftsman from Germany.  His recommended finish for durability is Osmo floor finish.  Apparently, it’s what they used in the Oslo, Norway airport.  While Shawn did happen to be at the Oslo airport last summer, he was in too much of a rush to inspect the floor.

Experimenting with a corner of one of the stair treads, Shawn realized that his  sander would take the finish off easily. (FYI: if it was really an epoxy finish, there’s no way we would have gotten it off so who knows what cheap junk they finished these boards with.)  So we’ll be refinishing these treads ourselves.  Nose first.