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Polishing
Hardwood
Floors -
Making
Your Room
Shine Again
Hardwood
floors add a lot of
value to a household and they can create a kind of comfort and mood
that no
other floors can match. However, they have a major flaw, as in time,
they tend
to lose their good looks and miss out on the one thing
they’re perfect for:
giving your room the shine you always wanted.
Fortunately,
unlike many
other
household items and parts, you don’t need to replace your
hardwood floor
entirely when it starts losing its value: you can simply polish it up
and get
its shine value to match that of installation day.
In order to make
your hardwood
floor polish process effective, you will have to go through three
separate
steps: cleaning it up, buffing it and applying the actual polish
(finish).
Clean Up
One of the worst enemies of hardwood floors is water and water-based
solvents, so whatever you do, avoid using them in the clean up process.
Instead, you could use a non-water-based commercial hardwood cleaner to
take out harder stains.
The dust and larger particles can be dealt with
using a vacuum and a broom and in the worst scenario, where your floor
is extremely dirty, you could use a stiff nylon scrub brush to get
those annoying stains out.
Polishing
The finishing touch of the polishing process is applying the last
coating of polishing solution or wax. Paste wax is longer lasting and
produces a great shine, but it’s harder to remove in later
stages and you might have trouble refinishing the floor.
Polishing
solution will still have to be removed if you want to refinish the
floor later on, but it’s easier to remove than wax, so
it’s ultimately your choice to balance out which one
you’ll be using.
You can apply the wax or solution by hand, tackling each section at a
time. Just make sure the floor is dry and clean before applying it,
otherwise you’ll have trouble applying the polish.
How often
you need to apply this kind of hardwood floor polish depends on the
type of floor you own, its age and the amount of traffic that it needs
to support on a daily basis.
Usually, if you want your floors to always be shiny and clean, applying
the polish once every year would be great.
In a household, once every 2
years works just as well, but just the same, in an office environment
for example, where a lot of people walk on by without caring too much
for the health of the floor they’re stepping on, you will
probably want to reduce the downtime between polishes to 6 months or
so.
How did you polish your hardwood floor?
Share Your Story / Tip with Other Visitors!
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