Refinishing a problem window with polyshades.

[James Marshall]

Polyshades is a Urethane Stain finish. I had read some negative reviews of Polyshades. Oddly enough a friend had given me a new quart of cherry Polyshades that sat in the cabinet. My problem was to refinish a 16 year-old divided lite window that had some rust stains under the hardware. It had been previously stained and finished with a two-part catalized lacquer.

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I sanded off the finish but the rust stain had soaked in. In addition, the pine remained and some of the previous sealer as well. I sealed it with Smith's epoxy sealer and restained it but the stain came out quite irregular.

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I sanded it lightly and reapplied a light coat of stain. Then I thought about the Polyshades. Using my HVLP Gun I applied the Polyshades. By building up the light places I was able to darken the light spots. Finally, I applied another two coats of satin urethane finish.

I was not able to completely cover the rust stain but most of it is covered by the hardware. This changed my view of Polyshades. Applied with the gun I had a lot of control.

Jim

[John TenEyck]

That sure does look nice. When you run into those types of stains again try bleaching them out with oxalic acid, often the major component of deck brightener products.

John

[Mark Bolton]

Nice work using the PolyShades as a toner of sorts. Thats about all its good for in my opinion. The stuff is a nightmare to work with if your brushing unless your going for an HGTV look (which means only looks good on TV from a distance).

As I was reading your thread I kept thinking "I hope he sprayed it". Scrolling down looked better and better.

Again, nice work, and +1 on the oxalic acid, it would have helped you minimize the stains. Are these sash in a place where the windows sweat a lot? Thats generally when you have that problem. Good to try an remedy the sweating as it will just wreak havoc for the life of the building.

[James Marshall]

This is the only problem window. It is an aluminum clad window (Marvin). It is using insulated glass. It is not leaking at the top. The only thing I can think happened was the sash actually leaked water from the outside. It only occurred in one window. The window next to it was fine. I think I am going to use small beads of caulking on the outside. I agree about the HGTV look. It probably even looked better with low definition TV

You are right about brushing. I do it as little as possible.

John. I will try the oxalic acid next time.

[Quinn McCarthy]

They are all true.

Quinn