3 Big Reasons to Opt for Pre-Finish

What does pre-finished mean and why should you consider pre-finished products?

Pre-finish is applying a finish, such as paint or stain, to a product prior to it being installed in its final location. Pre-finish products offer a number of benefits over having your products finished on-site.

1. Prep Process

There is no such thing as a wood product that is ready to be finished without proper sanding by the finisher. Pre-finished products, from Bayer Built Woodworks, are sanded and inspected under high intensity lights to remove cross sanding, handling marks, and scuffs that may not be apparent when wood is in its unfinished state but will certainly appear when stain is applied. The lighting in your home during the building process may not show cross sanding in the horizontal rails of your panel doors or oils and other marks from simply handling the wood product.

On-site finishing can also result in damage and contamination – some of which you won’t even notice until your stain is applied. Small scratches or scuff marks from people walking past a door where their hammer handle rubs the raw wood for instance are not always noticeable to see when a door is raw but will show up clearly when finish is applied. When you opt for pre-finished products, everything arrives to you finished and ready to be installed eliminating the risk of common job site hazards that could jeopardize the finished look of your product.

2. Environmentally Friendly

Bayer Built’s standard and Ultra pre-finish processes utilize water based stains and UV top coats that do not release harmful emissions into the environment. Low VOC stains and top coats are applied and cured at our pre-finish facility on equipment that minimizes waste. Plus, our UV seal and top coats are 98% cured at the moment they come off of the finishing equipment. By the time they arrive at your home they are completely cured. By comparison, field applied finishes are typically solvent based materials that don’t completely cure for several days to several weeks. The finish odor that you smell is the off-gassing of the VOC’s that are part of the curing process. Those harmful emissions are present in your home in the air that you breathe until the finish is completely cured.

3. Durability

The UV seal and top coats applied at Bayer Built are incredibly hard and scratch resistant; a type of finish cannot be duplicated with on-site finishing. Wood is a natural, cellular based product that takes on and releases water vapor as humidity levels change and thus can change shape if not properly sealed. Pre-Finished product components are finished individually, resulting in all sides of the product being sealed to ensure that the products don’t’ take on moisture at different rates which could otherwise result in the finish failing or releasing from the product.