Han wrote:

nestork wrote in
:

If shellac were commonly used on hardwood floors, it would be common
knowledge, and this is the first I've heard of anyone using shellac on
a floor.

That's probably because you're only talking to people who are
finishing new floors in (mainly) new houses. All of the (mostly
parquet) floors other than kitchen and bathroom in my 4-story 110 year
old brownstone had been finished with shellac when I moved in 30+
years ago, probably multiple times and probably interspersed with wax.
The result predictably was authentic but dirty-looking floors. Being
at the time gung-ho on polyurethane I sanded and refinished the floors
with that chemical using a gloss coat followed by a satin finish coat.
Although I'm not promoting the idea of museum-level restoration the
result was clearly inappropriate for an aged building so after doing a
few rooms I returned to the idea of shellac (orange shellac) which
imparts a much more pleasant warm golden glow to the floors. Further,
minor repairs to splintered pieces of parquet can be easily done and
the area refinished invisibly.

Not only is the look great, shellac dries very quickly meaning that
you can walk on it much more quickly than one of the newer chemical
finishes. Further, if you screw up you can easily cover your mistake
with another coat which will reliquify the base coat; try that with
your plastic. If that wasn't enough, the smell of the finish is
alcohol (the solvent) which is certainly less offensive than the
god-only-knows-what solvent for the poly and successor finishes.

One further success story for shellac: I had a teak coffee table I
wished to refinish. I sanded it then tried a wash coat of poly to seal
it. Disaster. The poly coat wrinkled and failed to dry. Oops bad
batch. Too old maybe? Re-sanded, new can, new attempt, same disaster.
I tried sanding sealer, supposedly lacquer base. It didn't work
either. At this stage I was pulling my hair out. I hadn't tried
shellac because like you I believed it wasn't a good finish for a
place where wet glasses might be put down but eventually I gave in and
applied a full coat of non-dewaxed shellac. Success! I still put an
overcoat of poly and it's held up to this day (15 years). Later,
talking to an old-time furniture refinisher and he said, "Sure,
everyone knows that teak is such an oily wood that the only finish
possible is shellac!" According to him the bad-mouthing of shellac
arose because the lacquer and later poly manufacturers were trying to
gain market share; most of it was pure malicious fabrication.