Hardwood Floor Cleaning Options

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With the massive up swing of people pulling carpet out and replacing it with hardwood floors their has been an equal up swing in people trying to capitalize on this trend. People coming out with new fancy marketed glamorized snake oil treatments seem to show up to the party every day. As an example I went to our friendly local orange big box store to do some grass routs research on the topic. In the cleaning aisle I found 6 products all promising "professional strength" results for bargain prices as low as $11.70 for an equally "orange" product. Working in homes everyday I hear first hand the confusion from people on how best to maintain their hardwood floors. Having grown up in a small business family in a small town we had to offer many services to stay busy year round and hardwood floor maintenance was one of those many. So let me let you in on the best kept secret in hardwood floors, I am still truly amazed how well this process has been kept under wraps for so long. Many people have been led to believe the only way to bring the shine back to your worn hardwood floors is by the dusty mess of a full sand down and reseal with new polyurethane and that is simply not the case at all.

Hardwood Floor Cleaning Options

If you've never experienced this life altering process I'll give you a brief synopsis of how this all goes down. Now if you happen to find a company that actually cares about you and your home they will first put up temporary plastic wall to shield the rest of your home from all the dust that this process stirs up. Then they will roll in this massive 200 plus lb. drum sander and a few other sanding tools for the edges. Now these sanders do have dust bags on them and in fairness they do a fair job of capturing most of the dust produced in this process. They will generally do 3 or 4 of what are called cuts with the drum sander with first a very aggressive sand paper then follow up with less and less aggressive drums until the floor is pretty smooth, then they will generally run a buffer over it with a special screen one last time to leave it as smooth as possible. Then they'll do a good sweep and vacuum to get all the dust cleaned up off the floor then apply either a stain then multiple coats of polyurethane or usually more common now a days just a few coats of polyurethane. The natural look is pretty common these days.

What is Scuff and Coat?

Now on to the "secret" this whole mess described above can be completely avoided. What is this "secret" method you may ask? More importantly why is this such a "secret"? Before I get to the "secret" I must warn you that if you have fallen for the big box store gimmicks and used any one of the many shine enhancing products.... you are no longer eligible for the money and time saving "secret"  because that stuff has to be either chemically stripped off (which yes I've done and is a huge pain in the butt) or it must be sanded off. Moral of the story, mop with vinegar water to get the dirt up and otherwise leave the shine enhancement to the professionals. Ok, I've drawn this out long enough now. The "secret" Hardwood Floor Cleaning process is very affordable by comparison to sanding at half the price of sanding and will only take one day compared to sanding which can last as long as a week for some jobs. Many people like the last benefit even more and that being very, very low dust. So what is a scuff and coat job in tale? I first power mop the floor with a buffer and wet towels to get the surface ready to be scuffed up. Then I change out the big towels under the buffer for a screen and yes it really does look like the screen in your windows but its quite a bit more aggressive in texture. Then I run the buffer over the floor to remove the top bit of worn old polyurethane off while simultaneously prepping the floor for a new coat of finish. You may be wondering why exactly we have to rough up your floor in order to make it shiny again and that's a good question. The answer is simply slick doesn't stick to slick. Have you ever painted metal before? Like maybe your deck chairs? If you don't rough up the existing finish the new finish will simply flake right off and floors are exactly the same way. In conclusion if you don't fall prey to the modern snake oil salesmen of hardwood floor cleaning then you can qualify for the best kept secret in the hardwood floor cleaning business, the scuff and coat is a process that generally lasts 3-5 years depending on the traffic level in your home. My general rule is the bigger the dog the more frequent you will need to do it to maintain the best looking floors. Oh and one more thing, no polyurethane can't just be buffed back to shinny like wax on a grocery store floor. Poly cures to a much harder finish then wax on a vinyl floor ever could.