Hardwood Floor Care

How To Tell If Your Hardwood Floors Need Professional Help, And Questions To Ask and Myths to Dispel About Hardwood Floor Care Options

Hardwood Floor Problems That Require a Pro:

• Does the floor look dull, lack finish, dingy, smeary, or cloudy?
• Are there patches of lighter wood appearing either under area rugs or where they once were? Or patches in front of windows that experience strong or direct sun?
• Do your traffic lanes seem dull, worn, or thin? Is there blackness in the grain where the finish has worn off?
• Where the raw wood is exposed (i.e. points of entry) can you see evidence of moisture from the outside grounds?
• Do you have small patches of finish that has peeled, like a sunburn?
• Do you see scratches from bar stools, chairs, or from dragging furniture across the hardwood?
• Do you have splinters, holes, soft mushy damaged areas or “sponge-like” or sink when you stand on them?
• Do you know if you have had bug infestation that has burrowed in the wood causing an appearance change?
• Does your nail, running across the scratch “stop” and get stuck in the scratch?
• Are there indentations or “divots” where the wood has depressed as a result of something being drug across it?
• Does the hardwood show pet nail scratch damage, either larger scratches from bigger pets or finite scratches from smaller pets (depressions but not through the finish)?
• Do you see light green, yellow or dark marks (dark explained below)?
• Do you have white, cloudy or black areas where water sources can affect the wood (i.e. dishwashers, sinks, bathrooms, near windows, doors)?
• Are there round black pet spots under area rugs or black spots where house plants are located?
• Have you had water damage?
  • are the boards cupped- a condition where the boards may have swelled, appearing higher in the middle of the board, so your foot trips up as you rub it across the board surfaces (each board in the affected area may do this), where they look swollen and too big for area they are installed in to.
  • are the board ends warped, curled or distorted?
  • are the boards buckling, and pulling away from the subfloor?
• Is there a definite “smeariness” to the floor, perhaps a sticky residue that is noisy when you walk across the floor with your shoe?
• Are there tiny round divots, the size of a pencil eraser randomly all over the floors, particularly in traffic lanes?
• Do you have a waffle-like spongy residue left from a pad that decomposed under your area rug, black marks near the tack-less strips once a carpet is torn out? Or is the finish once the carpet has been removed appear to be thin, or missing?