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Dealing
with
Hardwood Floor Scratches
Before even starting talking about how to deal with scratches on
hardwood floors, we need to get a few notions straight, so
there’s no confusion. First off, you need to understand the
difference between a scratch and a gouge.
A scratch is usually visible
at the surface but it’s not very deep, something a piece of
furniture would make when dragged along the hardwood floor, or a glass
falling down and cutting the surface.
A gouge on the other hand is a
lot deeper, it’s a “flesh wound” of the
floor. Dealing with hardwood flooring scratche is dealt with in a very
different way than dealing with gouges, so applying some hardwood floor
scratch remover on a gouge for example won’t make much of a
difference.
Your first job is determining exactly what you’re
dealing with in the first place.
Obviously, scratches are a lot more common. I bet there isn’t
one household that has hardwood floor installed that doesn’t
have at least a couple of scratches on the surface.
It’s not
only moving furniture or dropping objects on the floor that produces
scratches. Even sweeping the floor with something rugged or trying to
get a spill out quickly by rubbing it with a harder piece of cloth can
cause scratches in hardwood floors.
It’s almost inevitable to
get one, so it’s best if you know how to deal with them.
By the way, hardwood floor scratch repair is totally doable on your
own, even if you’re not very experienced with floor
maintenance and the likes. There’s really no need to hire a
professional if you think you can handle the following steps:
- Rough up the area of the scratch with a fine
sandpaper, or steel wool.
- Rub the entire length of the scratch, covering both
its margins in the process.
- Rub in the direction of the grain if possible,
otherwise use a circular motion so that you don’t damage the
wood and finish too much.
- You’ll probably have a lot of dust and wood
particles lying around now, so use a cloth dampened with mineral
spirits to absorb the particles and clean the
“wound” up.
- Allow the solution to dry up – it can take
anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the size of
the scratch, the solution you used and the amount of solution you used.
- Using a fine paintbrush, dip in the floor finish that
was used initially and then wipe them with a cloth, until
they’re almost completely dry.
- Be very gentle when brushing, you don’t
want to get too much finish on the scratch. Just enough to cover it and
get it to the same level as the rest of the floor.
- Allow the new finish to dry out – this,
again, can range from anywhere to half an hour to a few hours.
Hopefully, if you’ve done everything right, you should now
have eliminated the hardwood floor scratches you worked on. On a
perfect hardwood floor scratch repair operation, you should have no
visible trace that the area was “worked over”,
unless you’re very close.
You should also try to make sure that the new finish didn’t
create a puddle look, which is always annoying and can ruin the
floor’s value.
What do you do to protect your hardwood floor from scratches?
Do you have a tip on repairing wood floor scratches?
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