Today we applied a second coat of Rubio (this time their Universal Maintenance Oil) to the floor and countertops. As the name implies, Rubio Monocoat can be used as a single application but we both feel like one pass leaves the surface looking a bit dry. A second coat 48 hours later with their Universal Maintenance Oil adds a little more moisture protection and a light satin sheen. We do this to the wood countertops in our larger house every six months and they have held up remarkably well.
The first step was to vacuum the floor for the 400th time and then squeegee a light coat of maintenance oil across half the space. Effective application of Rubio is all about squeegee technique which not only makes the material stretch a long ways but has the advantage of picking up any nasty bits of grit or sawdust while you pull. By the middle of the room there was definitely an ugly little pile of crud that would have otherwise been ground into the floor with the polisher.
This time we rented a 13 inch floor polisher after our not-so-positive experience a few days ago trying to drive a 20 inch wide machine for the first time in such a small space.
Working with a white pad the machine was much easier to control but still had quite a bit of torque. I still think my original plan of using the large square random orbit sander that we used to sand the floors would probably be the most controllable way to buff in the Rubio in such a tight space. I wish I had an opportunity to try it so I could recommend it for certain.
To do today over again I probably just would have scrubbed the maintenance oil in with the hand scrubber and wiped by hand. The technique they show you in the videos of putting a towel under the white pad of the floor polisher is not nearly as easy as it looks. The towel grips the floor more than the white pad alone making the machine more aggressive and we found it challenging to keep the polisher on top of the towel.
Originally we thought we might use the polisher on the countertops as well but decided instead to scrub those by hand! We sanded the counters and the shelves very lightly with 600 grit before re-coating.
– Brian
