A bottle of chlorine bleach sat on my oak floor. Turns out there was bleach on the bottom of the bottle. Now the floor has dried but the bleach left behind what appear to be white deposits in the pores. (The rest of the wood appears unaffected.) Chlorine bleach is not supposed to lighten wood, but the effect of all those white pores in the oak when viewed from afar is an unsightly white ring.
I was told when I bought the house that the floor was finished with a "swedish" finish, whatever that means.
So is there anything I can do to fix this or make it less striking?
Uh, there's bleach and there's stain, kinda polar opposites. Stain (typically) absorbs some light spectrum. Bleach (typically) oxidizes surface layer of material to reduce absorption.
So, you might "remove bleach stain" by actually _applying_ stain, if you knew where it were needed- in the wood, in the finish layer, wherever.
Humpty-dumpty thing- breaking's easy, fixing fuhgeddaboudit. Consider what happens if you splash bleach on a non-white shirt. Instant work-shirt, IME.
you have to sand shellac off before putting something else on top of it when people talk about shellac as the universal sealer coat.
Neither of these is an option. If I wanted to refinish my floors the way to proceed would be obvious. The finish does not give the impression of being damaged.
a discoloration produced by foreign matter having penetrated into or chemically reacted with a material; a spot not easily removed.
There's nothing about the exact nature of the discoloration, type of chemical or chemical reaction involved, etc. I think my white pores qualify.
Indeed, I could do this. And I don't see why it matters where the damage is. My eyes don't tell the difference between the wood and the finish layer. I could presumably dye the stain with something, seal it with shellac and topcoat it with something else and try to blend it into the surrounding finish. (That last step could be troublesome given that I don't know the identity of the existing finish.) If I had a big solid white bleached spot it would be obvious that this would be the only possible approach. But in my case it would be pretty painstaking to dye the white parts since only the pores are white.
Let me repeat, the white is ONLY IN THE PORES, which appear to be full of white deposits. The non-pore parts of the surface look absolutely normal, just like the rest of the floor. The finish itself does not appear to have been damaged. The finish does not appear to have made use of any type of poor filler that could have been discolored by the bleach. (In other words, the floor has a somewhat rough surface with depressions where the pores are and the pores don't appear to be a different color in the undamaged parts of the floor.)
I'm not sure about the chemistry here, but if I have dried out deposits of sodium hypochlorite sitting in the pores then there may be different options for dealing with the problem that aim to remove the deposits or specifically target them to make them colorless or less visible. Also note that when the floor gets wet the pores lose their white color and blend in with the rest of the wood, so the white poors only stand out while the wood is dry.
Sure, but to bleach wood you need two part bleach. Chlorine bleach doesn't do it. If the wood had been bleached white then it would be obvious that the only solution would be to color it somehow. But that's not what happened. The wood surface itself looks the same as before, except in the pores which look like they're filled with white crud. The floor feels the same as the rest of the floor. The stain disappears when I get the floor wet, only to reappear once it's dry. (That doesn't happen with your bleach splash on the non-white shirt, does it?)
Probably you want to rinse down the area (yes, this will raise the grain; do it anyhow). A toothbrush swipe to the area won't hurt, either. Towel it down, wait a few hours for it to dry.
If the area still looks discolored, it may be that the bleach (which is alkaline) has attacked the oil finish (alkali plus oil slowly forms soap, which rinses away).
A quick rub with boiled linseed oil, followed by wiping the area with a thinner-dampened rag, can replace the oil finish and feather the edges. You had to remove the water-soluble gunk first, 'cuz it will hide under the new oil.
If that doesn't work, alas, I'd consider paint remover then refinishing large parts of the floor.
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