Wood Floor Care

Everyone loves a beautiful hardwood floor. A well-maintained hardwood floor adds elegance to a home as well as increasing its value. “Well-maintained” is the key to keeping your floors in the best condition possible.

The first step in maintaining your floors is limiting the amount of soil that ends up on the floor, since dirt scratches the finish. This can be done by placing a walk-off mat at all entrances into the home. These mats or rugs should be vacuumed on a regular basis to remain effective at removing soil from our shoes.

Hardwood floors should be cleaned every 1-2 weeks. The floors should first be vacuumed or swept to remove dirt and grit. You should then mop the floors using either warm water or a mild soap made for hardwood floor cleaning. Be sure not to overwet the floors as excess water could affect the finish.

The next step in maintaining hardwood floors is having the floor refinished on a regular basis, every 1-2 years. This process consists of removing the top layer of urethane finish and applying a new one. This is a fairly new process, and is extremely effective at removing scratches in the finish. Until recently, the only way to successfully restore a scratched hardwood floor was to have it sanded down and completely restained and refinished. This is both costly ($5-$7 per sq ft) and inconvenient to the family who usually must vacate the home while the restoration work is in process. In addition, a wood floor can only be sanded down for a maximum of three times over its lifetime.

To avoid the high cost of resanding and refinishing, it is important to maintain the urethane finish. Once the finish wears thin and the wood stain begins wearing off, there is no choice but to resand. Therefore, have the finish reapplied every 1-2 years or whenever scratches begin to develop. Your beautiful floors can stay that way with the help of your trusted cleaning company.

 
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