Home Flooring Guide

Whether you bought a home with beautiful wood floors in place or you had them installed, the flooring of your home is a thing of significant value to you.  You may have noticed how often people are attracted to the rooms where you have hardwood flooring and how much that natural feel of wood makes those rooms more cozy, intimate and relaxing to be in.  

But your wood floors also lend an atmosphere of elegance and relaxed grace and sophistication to your home.  Taking good care of them can guarantee that those beautiful floors will continue to grace your home for many years to come.  Here are a few tips on how to keep your hardwood floors looking great for many years of use in your home.

TLC for Your Floor Every Day

The two biggest enemies of your wood floor are moisture and dirt.  While everyone works to keep their floors clean and dry, it is a matter of survival for your wood floor that you maintain a daily routine of cleaning.  Water can warp the quality wood planks of your floor and dirt if left unattended can be ground into the flooring causing scratches that are difficult to get out.  So put some lifestyle changes in place to make sure your wood floor stays great looking including…

·    Using a broom with soft bristles, keep your floor swept each day.  A "Swifter" brand broom is also great because the soft surface will not damage the flooring.
·    Implement a policy of no shoes on the hardwood floor.  Family will agree that they want to keep your home beautiful and you will find guests more than understanding that you want to keep that gorgeous floor clean and free of stains.
·    While you are at it, implement a policy restricting food and drink being taken into rooms where hardwood floors are present.  This doesn’t mean no eating or drinking but some foods and beverages could damage those floors if spilled.  
·    Put area rugs around the doors into the room and cushion furniture by putting mats between furniture and the floor.  In that way, you keep a lot of dirt out of the room and you prevent even small movement of furniture from scratching the finish of your wood floor.

Know Your Floor

When the time comes that you do need to was or wax your hardwood floor, it is important that you know what kind of finish was used on it when it was installed.  Some cleansers can do some real damage to certain kinds of finishes.  For example, you should skip the waxing step of floor maintenance entirely if you floor was finished with a urethane product.  

You should always use cleaning products specifically designed for wood floors to avoid damaging the finish and possibly the wood itself.  Avoid the temptation to "cut corners" to use a product you buy at the supermarket.  To be absolutely certain you know how to care for your wood floor properly, establish a relationship with a local wood floor products supplier.  Once you have established what kind of cleaning products and procedures work best for you, you should stick with them religiously so your floor remains clean and unharmed for many years of use.

What NOT to Do.

If you use a cleaning solution that is water based, make it priority not to leave any residue on the floor when the cleaning is done.  Not only should you completely dry the floor when you clean it, you should make every effort to clean up any spill on your wood floor, even if it is just water because moisture is the enemy of your floor.

If your beautiful wood floor becomes damaged, be careful about DYI repairs.  Learn all you can about how to repair hardwood floors.    When in doubt, bring in the experts to fix the damage.  Better to invest in a job well done than see your floor damaged even further.

Don't neglect to look closely at your tools for cleaning your wood floors.  Mops should be avoided entirely and you should make sure the bristles of your broom and vacuum as soft so they gently clean without scratching your floor.   In short, everything that comes into contact with your wood floors should undergo some scrutiny to assure it will not damage the finish or the wood.  By being careful and vigilant, you can avoid costly repairs that not only are a nuisance, they lower the integrity of your floors.