Once you have new hardwood floors, you want them to stay as beautiful as they possibly can. Hardwood floor care is important to keeping your floor looking good. It is important to use a dust mop and vacuum your hardwood floors often. Dirt, sand, and other materials that may be drug inside from shoes or animals can scratch and dull your floor. Placing floor mats or rugs at door entrances helps keep some of these materials off your floor.
Hardwood flooring experts often recommend that you prevent damage from occurring by cleaning your floor and taking any possible precautions to prevent damage. It might be good to place a large rug under a dining room table since there is a higher chance of spills occurring during meals. This is especially true if you have young children in your home. Another tip is to place a mat or decorative rug in front of the kitchen sink where water may splash. If your bathroom has hardwood flooring next to the bathtub, you will want to be sure to have a thick, absorbent rug next to it. After bathing, each person in the household should be instructed to wipe up any water that happened to get on the floor. Water can permanently damage wooden floors, and it is important to not let spills sit for any amount of time. Most modern hardwood floors have a polyurethane coating that will protect them from spills, however. Sunlight can also damage hardwood floors, so it is best to close drapes and curtains when the sun is very hot.
The typical maintenance for hardwood floors besides using a dust mop and vacuum is to wet mop the floors with plain water when they are dirty. A minimum of water should be used, and if there are small puddles or if it is very wet, the floor should be dried. Otherwise, it can simply air dry. It is also helpful to buy maintenance cleaner from a professional floor supply company for your hardwood floor care. They sell spray cleaners than can be applied to your dust mop each time you use it. This will reduce the number of times that you have to do full water cleaning of your floor. Some people insist that vinegar is good for cleaning hardwood floors, but this is not recommended by floor manufacturers. You will eventually want to restore the new look of your floors by applying wax specifically made for hardwood floors. This will give you a new and beautiful shine that the floors had when they were new.
If you are not sure if your hardwood floor has a protective coating of some sort, you can experiment to find out what it has. If you put a tiny drop of paint remover in a corner or other inconspicuous area, the surface finish will bubble. This means that the floor has a polyurethane coating. Some builders and floor specialists use water-based urethane, and this will not bubble up.
There are ways to fix small problems in your routine hardwood floor care. For instance, if your floor has alcohol spots where someone dropped a drink, you can eliminate the spots by simply rubbing it with some paste or liquid wax. Heel marks can be rubbed off with fine steel wool and floor cleaner that will remove the marks but not the finish. If you have water stains where water penetrated the wood, you can also use fine steel wool on them and apply more floor wax. It is important to clean the edge of the stain first, and then work toward the middle. More serious water stains will require refinishing of the hardwood floor where the stain is. To do this, you can rub the spot with the fine steel wool and floor cleaner, then refinish with a coat of polyurethane and wax.
