Engineered wood flooring and solid hardwood flooring are both durable and highly attractive in their own rights.
With the reputation for toughness that hardwood floors have, it would be easy to assume that they would be able to withstand any typical form of everyday abuse, but that just is not the case.
With the cost involved in having hardwood floors in your home, wouldn’t you agree that it is worth taking the right precautions to avoid damaging them?
Keep your hardwood floors protected with these five inexpensive tips.
Furniture Floor Protectors
Like most people, you probably have quite a bit of furniture without standing up on legs, such as table legs and chair legs.
But you need to be aware that furniture with legs can surely cause scratches on your gorgeous wooden floors and can spoil their beauty even if the legs are only moved ever so slightly.
Ruby Sliders Reviews have spoken loud and clear about how helpful Ruby SLiders can be when these inexpensive leg protectors are placed under the legs of furniture, almost like a sock around them that is still remaining out of sight.
Red Slider leg protectors come in various sizes, and along with saving your floors, they may also lower the number of unsightly gouges if you accidentally smack your furniture legs with the vacuum.
Chair leg cover that protects your floors prevents scratching and slides with ease without all the noise! Easily fit them snugly over virtually any size furniture leg. They easily glide over your floors, so you can move heavy furniture with ease.
Clean Your Floors
If you have been way too lenient lately about the “no shoes in the house” policy with hardwood floors, it is integral that you start to become more of a stickler for the rules.
Outdoor debris tracked into your home by the bottoms of your shoes or even beneath the paws of your pet deposits itself on your hardwood flooring, and if it remains for too long, it can slowly mess up your flooring’s topcoat.
Cleaning your wooden floors on a regular basis helps you get rid of abrasive dust that can dull the top coat of your hardwood floors.
Don’t Clean Your Floors with Water
Water and wood don’t mix well together at all, especially with hardwood floors being an organic product with a cellular structure that quickly responds when water enters it.
Swelling and decay are what typically follow when wood gets wet, messing up the unsealed raw wood of the floorboard sides and bottoms that you have been trying to take good care of.
Clean your hardwood floors daily with a broom that has soft bristles and for weekly cleaning, use a vacuum designed for hard flooring as well as for carpeting.
Floors and Pets
Some of the deepest gouges in wood flooring can originate from the claws of a dog and even cats from time to time as well.
Dogs spend time moving about, and they aren’t particularly concerned with how their actions are affecting your hardwood floors; as you can imagine,
To protect your hardwood floors and make them more pet-friendly, b ensure to purchase hardwood flooring that gets high ratings on the Janka hardness scale, with wood types like Brazilian walnut (ipe) and maple that can do an excellent job of withstanding claws.
Lay out some rugs and mats where your domestic animals tend to rest and get in the habit of clipping your pet’s claws regularly when they grow longer to reduce nail damage on your wood flooring.
Lay Down Mats and Runners
Laying down a few runners, mats, and area rugs all over your hardwood floors doesn’t defeat the purpose of having hardwood flooring when you think about being able to enjoy the rich luster of real wood floors.
But entryways experience a huge amount of foot traffic in your dwelling, right along with interior hallways, kitchens, and living rooms.
But by putting down no-slip rugs and runners, you can actively slow down the wear and tear on the floors.
When it comes to kitchens, place your mats in front of the kitchen sink and dishwasher to catch spills before they even have a chance to make direct contact with the wood.
They also have kitchen mats that can help absorb some of your body weight a bit to make it much more comfortable to stand on them for long periods of time while you are cooking and cleaning.
Leave small mats at the front of doorways to encourage people to leave their footwear at the door so as to not drag the mess underneath those feet all over your wooden floors.
Sand Your Floor Carefully
You shouldn’t be sanding your wood floor very often, even for cosmetic reasons.
Hard sanding with a drum sander tears off the top coat and potentially even a bunch of the actual wood itself, making the floors weaker than before.
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