5 Must See Floor Tips for Spring

Spring is here. With it comes the ever faithful “April Showers,” which equates to mud and dirt in most areas of the country. So now is an ideal time to review some of the best tips to protect your wood floors. With the proper cleaning and protection, you can significantly increase the life of the finish and minimize your maintenance and repair costs.

Today, we’ll share five tips to take the best care of your wood floor. Most of which are DIY-friendly!

1. Tips for Entry & Traffic Areas

You can’t cut down on traffic into your home. All you can do is manage the traffic as it enters and give everyone the proper tools to keep harmful elements off the wood. A few products that might come in handy are entry mats, a plastic boot storage mat, and a boot cleaner.

Also, be sure to keep a mop handy, something like a Swiffer to pick up water, spills, and mud as it happens.

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2. Tips for homes with Pets

Pets bring so much joy to a household, but when Spring comes, it’s not hard to see where Fido took his last nap, with the dried-up mud puddle on your wood floors.

It is important to keep dirt and debris off the floors because it can act as sandpaper with continued traffic. So if you aren’t one of the lucky few with a custom mudroom, complete with a dog shower, you are going to have to deal with this indefinitely. But who wants to sweep and mop every day! Why not invest in a little technology and consider an iRobot. It will be the most expensive mop you have ever purchased but could save you a lot of time cleaning each week.

Another area of concern when it comes to pets is pet bowls. Wood floors are becoming increasingly popular in the kitchen due to their comfort, beauty, and longevity. There are easy (and stylish) solutions, like decorative vinyl mats, to protect your wood floors from water.

Always be sure to test the cleaning agent you are using in an inconspicuous area of your hardwood floors to ensure it doesn’t cause any damage.

3. Furniture Tips

Unless your furniture consists of oversized Turkish pillows, chances are you will have furniture of all styles, sizes and weight sitting on top of your wood floors.

Furniture tends to show up with metal glides on the bottom or just raw wood. When this rests on the flooring, and especially if it can move around (even slightly) from day to day, it can cause mild to severe abrasion on the surface of your flooring. Initially, this will cause scuff marks on the finish but can eventually scuff the wood flooring itself. This could mean that you need to refinish your floors sooner than later.

To help minimize and potentially avoid this entirely, you must invest in protective pads for the bottom of your furniture. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been quite as modernized as most interior décor accessories. While we wait for the next best thing, check out these trendy chair socks on Etsy. Magic sliders work well if you know you need to move furniture often. Then you’ve got the old standby with felt bottoms.

Some furniture protectors are installed via adhesive, while other protectors rest under the furniture or are screwed into the bottom of the furniture. Either way, make sure you can replace the soft, protective layer between the furniture and the flooring to ensure you can install a new pad when the other one wears out. Also, don’t install any adhesive material directly on your floor. This is impossible to remove and can eat away at your finish over time.

You can also consider installing decorative rugs under your primary furniture, like this home from Studio Santalla, featuring Carlisle Hickory flooring. If you use rugs, be sure to avoid those with an abrasive backing, which can scratch your flooring finish.

4. Cleaning Tips

Hardwood flooring is one of the easiest flooring styles for your home. They are easy to clean, they don’t collect dust and debris like other floor covering, such as carpet, which also keeps your home healthier.

Unfortunately, there is no “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to finding the right cleaner for your floor. It all depends on the type of finish you have on your floor. It is best to seek out recommendations from the flooring manufacturer for instructions. They may even sell their own hardwood flooring cleaner, so you know exactly what to use.

Typically, you want to avoid tough chemicals and cleaners, which can eat away at your finish. A green alternative is to use white vinegar to clean hardwood floors.   According to the Love to Know blog,  dilute 1/2 cup of white distilled vinegar with one gallon of warm water.  This is often the best cleaning solution for finished or sealed hardwood floors, not waxed or unfinished hardwoods.  And as an added benefit, household vinegar is known to kill bacteria, mold and viruses.  Avoid waxes unless that is a specific component of your maintenance plan, as these are difficult to clean and maintain.

No matter what cleaning methods you use, avoid using excess water during the process.

5. Finish Maintenance Tips

The frequency of your flooring maintenance will depend on the type of floor and finish you have. But there are three other things to consider as well, and hopefully, you learned this before you installed your floor:

What are the maintenance requirements?

Each wood floor style can have its own maintenance requirements, some of which can also depend on your personal preference. Pine flooring, for example, is meant to develop a vintage look, so most people will allow the floor to age for a longer period of time before recoating the finish. With more modern flooring styles, like hardwood, you may want to maintain them more regularly. Commercial spaces also have different requirements than residential spaces.

Can the floor be sanded and recoated

Wood flooring today is not created equal. Many floors are mass-produced, resulting in a thin piece of flooring, with an even thinner wear layer — the top layer of wood that you walk on. Sometimes this wear layer is only a few pieces of paper thick! These floors are appealing due to their low cost, but the reality is, once the finish wears out, you cannot sand and refinish them. So the long-term costs of owning this type of floor may actually be higher than other wood floors because of the cost of replacement. Typically, you want to make sure your floor has at least a 3/16″ wear layer, which will allow for 3 sandings, if needed, over the life of the floor.

Do you need to sand the floor to refinish it?

Wood floors are finished with a variety of topcoats. Depending on what product is being used, it can impact whether or not a floor should or even can be sanded for recoating.  Site finishes are typically easy to touch up with spot applications or a light buffing and recoat.  Prefinished wood flooring can be a little trickier, depending on the manufacturer. Extremely high aluminum oxide content in the topcoat, for example, can make touch-ups and recoat extremely difficult.  At Carlisle, we use a small amount of aluminum oxide in the topcoat to protect against day-to-day wear while still allowing you to screen and recoat the floor in the future if you need to.

Spring is a great time of year to refresh your floors if it’s time to touch them up. There are two ways to do it. The first is an actual touch-up of heavy wear areas such as your front door or in the front kitchen sink. The second is an entire recoat of your floor. The latter is the most disruptive, but some clients choose to do it on a fixed schedule, perhaps every few years when they know they will be on vacation. Most of the time, though, you can easily maintain specific areas in the home, so you won’t need to recoat the entire as frequently.

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