How do you clean your hardwood kitchen floors? (X-posted on cleaning)
rebeccamomof123
8 years ago
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8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoDebbi Branka
8 years agoRelated Discussions
How do I clean grooves in hardwood floor?
Comments (1)Some really like the look. Personally I do not like the grooves for the same reason you mention. I have laminate in a blonde maple color. The little grain lines, the tiny ones, are literally grey. The only way I can get floor clean is to literally use a scrubbrush/toothbrush. I have a large room and it took forever to clean one area. By the time I got to other side of room , the other side was dirty again. We are putting in a new floor, a med cherry color. The dirt will be there but at least I won't be able to see it. In your case I think you need to take some sort of brush and do it by hand. I would do it as close to refinishing date as possible. The effort will be worth it. Maybe the resealing will be able to fill the spaces??? That would be nice....See MoreFloor frustrations-how to clean up these old hardwoods?
Comments (6)Thanks for your suggestions on chemicals and warnings against drum sanding. I went shopping Monday morning for chemicals, and in the meantime Mr. Weedy made faster passes on the floor with the sander to avoid heating up and globbing the shellac or whatever was on the floor. Results: Denatured alcohol did nothing. I tried wiping with a rag, scrubbing with steel wool, flooding a small area and letting it sit, all with no results. Guess it's not shellac. I then tried lacquer thinner. Scrubbing with a rag seemed to have an effect, so I did a fairly large area. Once it dried, however, there was minimal results, and less so on the unsanded wood than sanded. I tried it in one of the bedrooms that had a single sanding pass, and quit once I started feeling a little stomach cramping. :-) Yes, I had the windows open and a fan going. Sanding that didn't seem any different from the area I didn't apply the lacquer thinner. Didn't try the mineral spirits yet. In the meantime Mr. Weedy had sanded one of the bedrooms about 18 times with 60 grit (seemed to create more dust than 20 grit), and made headway. I took an orbital sander with 40 grit to the spots left behind (slightly deeper grooves/dents) and here's where we're at: Bottom left corner is where I hand sanded. Lowe's had no oxalic acid, but we've got some in our garage 100 miles away, so we'll work on the kitchen again later. Also, in the meantime, we used a belt sander on the mosaic inlay portions to get off the lippage, machine sanded over it to even out the belt sander marks, and then chipped away with a hand sander to get the residual off. This shows what our eventual goal is, but it'll be dozens of hours if we have to hand sand off this finish. I've done some more googling and may try citrus strip or Formby's furniture restorer to remove the finish. We've also got this area that had tile over it. The thinset seems to have bleached out the wood where it touched, but even aggressive hand sanding is having a tough time evening out all the discoloration. I'm still very open to additional suggestions to attack this. And I must say that I now know the answer to the question, "why would anyone cover up hardwood floors?" Anyone who asks has never personally refinished them. :-)...See MoreHow do you clean your kitchen hardwood floors
Comments (30)I've just gone back through this thread quickly and one thing that I haven't seen is a definition of what the finish is. If it's a plastic finish--urethane or such--then simply washing with limited am't of soap and water is what you do and you don't let the liquid sit on the floor afterward. Don't bathe the floor luxuriously; just spit-bath it. If you have a non-plastic finish, you would treat it differently. I have a urethane floor in kitchen, on red oak. Unfortunately, I had a gel mat laid out when our puppy peed on the floor many years ago. The urine wicked into the area under the mat and was in contact with the floor all night before we discovered it. Despite the plastic finish on the floor, the urine was able to penetrate the urethane and as you probably know, ammonia turns oak black. I have a permanent memory of my puppy that was embedded into my floor, an impossible-to-ignore black area. Perhaps it will go away if we refinish the floor but I'm not sanguine about that. My point here is that despite seeming to be bullet-proof, the urethane finish is permeable. Do not use ammonia on your floor and do not allow liquid to pool on the floor for any length of time. Well, duh! Meanwhile, keep sand and dirt out of your kitchen as much as possible--these contain abrasive particles that will sand off the urethane coating over time. They are your enemy because a wounded coating of urethane will allow liquids to permeate the wood. And discolor your oak. Florantha...See MoreHow to clean (as in 'mop') hardwood floor?
Comments (31)I dust mop with the Bona dust mop and use vinegar and water on the Bona terry cloth. I then go over the wet floor with a dry Bona terry cloth. I use 1 cup of white vinegar in a gallon of water. BTW, a floor installer told me never to use anything on my floors but vinegar and water so that they could buff them in the future rather than sand them. I am assuming that the Bona spray is vinegar and water. I am too thrifty to buy the Bona solution when white vinegar and water works really well....See Morerebeccamomof123
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