Help! Milky White residue on my hardwood floors!

7 years ago

Hi, recently we had our hardwood floors refinished, but the guy that did them got stain all over the shoe at the bottom of the base boards. Well we taped and repainted the shoe, but unfortunately we must not have taped well enough because the floor was left with several areas with latex paint on it. The paint had dried hard by this time so we were having extreme difficulty scraping any paint up. After some googling I saw that Goof Off was an option.....well apparently we are the goofs because the paint came off but now we are seeing a white milky residue on the areas. My husband did use pledge on the same areas after the goof off so my only hope is that maybe the pledge, not the goof off left the residue. After more googling I am seeing that ppl have had good results using windex to get rid of residue. Is windex a good next step?

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Comments (3)

User
7 years ago
Stop with the witches brew before you ruin the rest of the floors. Have your flooring guy back to replace those boards.
PRO
Cancork Floor Inc.
7 years ago
Goof Off is a solvent. Solvents DISSOLVE stuff....that's how they work. The solvent has DISSOLVED your finish (and the paint BTW). I'm going to guess that the hazing is because the finish on the floors (being rather fresh) has hazed or etched (the Goof Off has eaten into the finish). And possibly a little bit of paint has been etched in there with it. And the Pledge is going to complicate EVERYTHING.

Sigh. At this point, you have nothing more to loose. You can try a bit of rubbing alcohol in this area to see if we can clean up the white and REMOVE the Pledge. Pledge is NASTY! It is wax in a can! And wax PREVENTS refinishing of hardwood. Yah. Prevents "the fix" that needs to be done. Throw out the Pledge and see if a little bit of rubbing ETOH on a CLEAN white cotton cloth will help.

If this is hazing/etching/ruined finish then the rubbing ETOH won't help. If it is paint residue then the ETOH MIGHT help. Give it a go. You have nothing left to loose at this point.

Once you have done your testing and find the haze is still there, go ahead and call the floor professional back in and explain the ENTIRE story. Including the pledge!!! It is *possible to do a patch repair (it won't look good but it can be done). If you are OK with the patch, then go for it. A few hundred dollars more won't hurt any thing at this point.

If you are super picky (some people are...some aren't) then the patch won't be good enough. The top coat of the entire floor will have to be reapplied. The area that needs fixing will get a good sanding and some new layers of finish and then THE ENTIRE floor gets a single top coat to get everything all evened out.

And BTW: If you had LEFT the paint where it was and called the painter BACK IN to clean up the mess, this would have been dealt with/paid for by the PAINTER. By stepping in and trying to do a clean up, you've taken on all responsibility of the "clean up mistakes" and painted yourself into a corner. I'm sorry to say but the cure may have been worse than the disease.

Good luck. Decide on how perfect you need this area to be before bringing in the floor guy. If you must have perfection, then you will be looking at reapplying the top coat. If you can live with a slight imperfection at a wall, then a little patch will do just fine.
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PRO
User
7 years ago
Hi Katie,

Our advice is not to put anything else on the floor. If you were to use alcohol it needs to be diluted with water before doing so. However, we recommend calling your refinishing company back to come over and take a look at the situation. They may have to screen and recoat/buff the floors in order to fix the milky residue you are seeing. Hopefully they will work with you on cost if this is the route that needs to be taken. If you were our customer we certainly will help you out. The goof off probably had a reaction to the poly thus causing the issue you are seeing now.

Do not put anything else on the floor until you have contacted your floor company. Using too many different chemicals on the floors is not recommended.

On another note, once you have taken care of this issue ammonia FREE Windex is our go to choice for a streak free cleaner.

from our team here at The Couture Floor Company

The Flooring Bog

The Couture Floor Company

Help! Milky White residue on my hardwood floors!

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Cancork Floor Inc.

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