Like an idiot I stained and finished our new wood window casing & sills with Shellac several years ago. Now of course the sun & exposure has pretty much taken their toll & I need to refinish.
I don't want a urethane since that yellows over time. I was thinking about a pre-cat laquer or a water based polyurethane or varnish. Any preferences? I'm leaning to the poly. It will be brushed on.
Unless you use an opaque finish like PAINT, the sun will continue to takes its toll on translucent finishes.
And to take this a little further, you say that you do not want to use a urethane finish. But then mention possibly using a polyurethane.
Polyurethane is urethane with additives. If you do not want urethane, you also don't want polyurethane and or "poly"
Urethane's and polyurethane finishes do not necessarily turn yellow over time. Oil based polyurethane finishes tend to yellow immediately and more so over time. Water based polyurethane finishes tend to be crystal clear and remain that way.
Varnish is a relative broad and generic term for most any relatively clear finish including "shellac".
Finishes that allow sun to penetrate, relatively clear finishes, will break down more quickly than opaque finishes, like paint. Paint does not allow UV rays to penetrate like clear finishes.
Had water based poly on the sill of a bay window, it of course had plants they were on 12 x 12 tiles. The sun exposed poly darkened or did the stuff under the tile lighted????? You could see the outline of the tile when we moved out. If it was my sills I would look for some Rock Hard floor varnish. But that may be a gone company.
The best one can do for something like this is spar varnish from a marine store, like West Marine. There are also deck varnishes that will do.
Joe Gwinn
Isn't the only interesting property of spar varnish is that it's somewhat flexible (so doesn't crack and peel off spars)?
Pretty much and seem to remain sticky and will need to be reapplied periodically.
Are you referring to the sill or the stool (i.e., on the outside or inside of the house)?
If it's the sill I wouldn't expect shellac to last for even a year. If it's the stool refinishing shellac is a given. I'd be inclined to use a water based polyurethane on the inside and spar varnish on the outside.
Minwax oil-based Wipe-On Poly doesn't yellow.
The can calls it "slight ambering". ;-)
(Gotta love those marketing folk.)
*Everything* yellows around here in the Spring.
Ah yes the pines of the south.
I comes out of the trees like snow. ...but don't eat the yellow snow
We have Cottonwood trees in my area. We get late spring/early summer "snowfalls". Not as bad as this, but close.
Watch out where the Huskies go, and don't you eat the yellow snow.
- F. Zappa.
Not like that on the ground but this isn't unusual:
We had 2" a few years ago and it shut down the city for three days (named "Snowmageddon"). We lost power for three days. With electric heat (heat pumps) it got rather cold.
Worse. idiot politicians warned companies to send people home early, just as schools were getting out. It got so bad that people abandoned cars on the interstates. Busloads of kids were stuck in the ensuing (not so) rush hour. At least one bus with lower-primary school kids was stuck on the interstate overnight. Can you imagine being trapped with a busload of 5-8 year-olds, overnight, without bathrooms?
We get the yellow pollen on our vehicles, the Cottonwood everywhere - noses included - and I have to clean my gutters 3 times a year. If I wait too long in the spring, the helicopters sprout and I get a bunch of maple trees in my gutters. I may need to pay someone this year. Not sure when my shoulder will be able to handle a 28' extension ladder.
The worst years are when I have to hook a hose on my belt, climb the ladder and use hot water to melt the ice before I can get the leaves out. It's a good thing I put a hot water hose bib next to the garage right after I moved in.
I had enough of the cold weather outages, so a few years ago I bought a generator and put an 240V inlet on the back wall of the house and a manual interlock on the panel. Other than testing the setup a few times, I haven't had to actually use it. Probably never will. ;-)
I installed this kind of interlock. (not my panel). It prevents having the main breaker and generator breakers on at the same time.
Yeah, that made the national news.
When we get 2" we call it "nuisance snow".
Helicopters and leaves from maple trees in the fall are the worst. We had a maple overhanging our garage. They always fell after it got cold and I'd be out there freezing my ass off cleaning them out of the gutters. Fortunately, we didn't have any gutters on the back (shed dormer on Cape). Things like gutter guards, or whatever they're called, just make it worse.
SWMBO gets all pissy if I get the extension ladder out anymore. She doesn't like the larger step ladders but the extension ladder sets her off.
Didn't have that but did have ice.
We have outages fairly often, though less so lately. The area is building up so I think they're adding redundancy into the system around here. It's not that there are none, but they don't last long. We had a tornado come last month, about five miles from here, and we lost power for maybe a half hour.
Neighbors on two sides of us have automatic systems. I don't see spending thousand$.
How does that work?
Again, we have heat pumps so it makes no sense to have a whole-house system. We have two entrance panels (each 150A), which makes it even harder.
90% of the problems are caused by morons, of course. They can't even deal with rain.When I was living in Vermont, we called it "night".
To a certain extent, it?s a gravity based system.
On the part that attaches to the main breaker, you can see a vertical slot and a rivet head. The part on the ganged generator breakers just below the main has a similar slot. Let?s call them ?blockers?.
In the normal operating mode (main on) the blockers just basically hang on down as shown.
You can?t turn on the generator breakers unless you slide its blocker up, but you can?t slide it because it hits the main breaker?s blocker. In order to get the main breaker?s blocker out of the way, you have to turn the main breaker off.
Once you turn the main breaker off, you slide both blockers up and turn the generator breakers on. When you let go of the blockers, the generator?s blocker sits on the top of breaker and keeps the main breaker?s blocker up, preventing you from turning on the main.
When you turn the generator breakers off, both blockers drop down and the main can be turned back on, but the generator breakers can?t be.
I have my panel set up such that the essential circuits are split fairly evenly across the 2 phases. The breaker map is not only labeled to show which breaker controls what, there is also a red G next to the circuits that I want on when the generator is being used. I got a great deal on a practically new 6250/5000 watt generator, which can easily handle my essentials. I made my own cord which was *way* cheaper than buying a ready made cord at the length I wanted. My generator lives under my deck, which is 6? off the ground and roofed underneath. All I need to do is start it up, run the cord to the inlet and start flipping breakers.
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