Vitrify? Varnish? Oil? What ‘wood’ you do?

The work in our new upstairs "apartment" — to use an A-word that's not "attic" — really is finished now. All that's left to do is pay for it all. Well, and paint. We received what they call « la douloureuse » a few days ago. That's the "painful thing" — the bill to pay.

The last little touches were finished Monday and yesterday. On Tuesday we were out all day having fun, so no work was done. Now all the baseboards are as good as they are going to get — except for painting. The other moldings, doors, walls and so on are in place and trimmed to satisfy our requirements. And the metal railing on the lower stairway has been soldered and screwed back into place, so there's no risk of anybody accidentally falling off the landing.

This is the product I at first thought we should buy and use.
Doing so would have meant a drive over to Tours. It's a
water-based, acrylic varnish. I bet it's expensive.

Now comes the hard part for us — the varnishing and painting. Today, we hope to be able to buy the varnish or sealer that we'll finish the floor and stairs with. After much research, reflection, and discussion, we've decided to go with the products available from a local supplier. Another option was to drive the hour or so over to Tours and buy floor finishing products in a specialty shop there.

We've decided not to go down that path. Even though the products might be of higher quality, they are surely much more expensive. And there's that trip there and back, which can take up a good portion of a day. If we ended up having to return to the shop several times over the course of the job, we'd be wasting a lot of time in, and fuel for, the car.

These seemed pretty pricey to me. I decided to pass.

The local supplier I'm talking about is a hardware/home-improvement shop called Bricomarché, a national chain. The verb « bricoler » and noun « bricolage » describe what "do-it-yourself-ers" get involved in. And Bricomarché is one of the French retail chains that sells the tools and products the DIYers have need of.

Here's another varnish, especially for stairs.
The instructions on the page are interesting.

And they are having a sale! When I first did some research on the web for varnishes for wooden floors and staircases, I found a Bricomarché catalog that listed two grades of varnish —
« Passages Extrêmes» and « Hautes Performances » — of the 3V3 brand. Both products are in the « vitrificateur » category. You apply them to "vitrify," or seal, wood floors and stairs. In other words, they contain polyurethane.

The problem with the 3V3 products was the cost. They sell, respectively, for 106 € and 157 € a bucket, which contains 2.5 liters. We'll need at least four is not six cans of one or the other, bringing the cost to between 500 and 1,000 €. Ouf !

And here's the one we are aiming for now. What a deal!
It's 10 euros per liter, water-based, quick-drying, and
highly resistant to scratches and abrasion.

Then in Monday's mail we got a new publicité flyer from Bricomarché. In it I saw a water-based vitrificateur product for sale at about 30 € a tin. And the tin holds 3 liters, not just 2.5 l. Again, even if we need 6 tins (18 liters, which is nearly 5 U.S. gallons), it will set us back only about 200 €. That's better. And if we need more of it, to apply an extra coat, we can just pop over to Bricomarché, which is about 5 miles from the house, to pick some up. The sale price is good until July 4.

All this is assuming that Bricomarché will actually have the product in stock. More about that later.