You’ll be happy to know that your wood flooring is one of the easiest surfaces to maintain in your Maryland/D.C. home. With very little daily attention and minor periodic intervention, your wood floors can look new for many years; and, when the time comes to put a fresh, revitalizing finish on your floors, Residential Floors is the professional to call!
“An Ounce of Prevention…”
Sometimes it’s not as important what you do to treat your hardwood floor but how you choose to protect it. Hardwood floors really have two significant enemies: water and sand (dirt/grit). These two culprits are typically transferred from the outdoors into your home by tread-bearing shoes. By having (and using) walk-off or ‘scrub’ mats at the exterior entrances of your home you are dramatically reducing the rate that these agents are transported onto your finished floor. Small area rugs on the interior can help reduce the problem as well, but know that you’ve already walked across a floor to get to them. Here’s a few other precautions to take:
- Avoid walking around in high-heeled or stiletto-heeled shoes. Even the lightest of adult women can produce a p.s.i. (pounds per square inch) of pointed pressure with these type of shoes that can indent a wood floor.
- Sweep or vacuum daily or as extra traffic indicates—keep the grit off the floor!
- Trim Fido’s nails–toenails on a dog can scratch the finish.
- Boot-trays are a great way to capture melting snow and water–keep them by the door or just outside the door.
- Pick-up spills (food, drinks, etc.) quickly—especially alcoholic beverages as these are quick to compromise many urethane finishes.
- When your teenage daughter MUST paint her nails, have her put a towel down on the floor—the nail polish remover raises havoc with the finishes on the floor.
- In traffic areas, wash (with extremely wrung-out cloth) your floor with an approved cleaner (Ph-neutral, no surfactants—just ask us for some, okay?)
- When rearranging furniture, don’t do it alone and drag things across the floor. All you need is one grain of sand beneath one chair leg to create a huge scratch. Get help!
When it’s Time to Refinish
The tell-tale signs of the need to refinish a wood floor is when your traffic areas appear much duller than the perimeter of the room or when you can actually see or feel the rougher texture of the wood floor (the latter is a signal that you waited a bit too long). Residential Floors is the company you should trust to make your floors new again. With the advent of new, faster drying finishes, the inconvenience of refinishing is minimized significantly. Ask us about the advantages and disadvantages of the many types and compositions of finishes we apply so that you get exactly what finish suits your needs.
…a Couple Extra Notes for You
- One of the big ‘no-nos’ in flooring maintenance is the purchasing of cleaning products from a local department or grocery store. While, somewhere on that shelf, there may be one that works but, more often than not they’re not a good product to use. Don’t be fooled by a label that states, ‘Safe for hardwood (laminate, vinyl, etc.) floors’ because, quite honestly, they are marketing to sell their product and not to care for your floor. Quite often, these products are notorious for leaving a film behind which means that you’ll have to use their product again to remove it; and from there, it really becomes a maintenance regimen that you don’t want. So, don’t do it.
- Oftentimes a ‘crease’ in the urethane coating (especially in pre-finished hardwood floors) is mistaken for a scratch or indent in the wood. See a professional from Residential Floors as these blemishes are easier to resolve.
- If your wood flooring is losing its luster from wall to wall then it’s likely that you’re using the wrong cleaner or too heavy a concentration of the right one (a film is building). Call us if this sounds like your home.
