Some General Facts About Hardwood Flooring

Hardwood flooring is beautiful, durable and long lasting. Most hardwood flooring is designed to last a lifetime in your home if you take care of it correctly. So, how do you take care of a hardwood floor?

First of all, hardwood flooring is a natural wood product with a wear layer on the surface. Some people think with the newer, harder finishes (aluminum oxide infused, UV cured urathanes) that are applied to the wood that they can just walk all over them without a care in the world. I don't know of any flooring (maybe concrete.....lol) that this is true of. Okay, ceramic tile is extremely tough to ruin also but we're talking about wood here.

A pre-finished hardwood floor still needs careful attention to allow it to remain beautiful for years to

Walk Off Mat

come. A walk off mat should be located at every doorway leading to the outside, whether that's a garage door, entry door or a door wall leading to the deck. Wherever dirt, sand or other abrasive materials are located that could potentially lodge into the bottom of footwear (and hence scratch the surface of any hardwood flooring), this would be the place to set a mat. Anybody coming in from the outside should be encouraged to wipe their feet on the mat before entering onto the wood flooring or better yet, to take off their shoes. Anybody who has a hardwood floor and has scratches from shoes will know what I'm talking about. Better to be safe than sorry.

Another fact about hardwood concerns the weather and changing seasons (and thereby changing

Gaps Between Boards

humidity levels). Wood flooring is still a living (kinda....lol) breathing product. It will expand and contract with differing humidity levels. I've written a blog on this in the past so I won't go into detail here but suffice it to say, wood will contract in the winter with dryer air in the home and will show tiny gaps between individual boards. This is not a defect of the flooring but is a natural reaction to lower humidity levels. The wood will expand and close the gaps when the humidity rises. Either add a humidifier to the home or wait till spring!

Swiffers Are Best For Cleaning

Another fact: wood and water don't mix! People like to keep their floors clean and spotless (at least some of us do. lol) but resist the urge to wash your floors as if they were a vinyl floor. Since hardwood flooring is being installed so ofter in kitchens these days (where we cook and drop stuff on the floor. Yikes) people will just grab their mops and have at it. Don't do it. Wood floors are not meant to have that amount of water applied to them. Just spot clean with a damp (not wet) cloth and wipe dry. If you would like to clean the whole floor then a swiffer that cleans with hydrostatic electricity works best for dirt, dust and other dry type particles. Some hardwood flooring manufacturers make a spray cleaner designed specifically for wood and laminate floors which can and should be used (ideally no water). We here at Dover Floor Covering carry Mohawk hardwood flooring and they make their own hardwood flooring cleaner. If you must use water then you would need to squeeze out the excess water from the mop and it should have no more water in it then the clothes in your washing machine after the spin cycle would have.


Another fact: Harder wood flooring will wear similar to softer hardwood flooring. Even though the

urethane finishes applied to most hardwood flooring products these days is the same or similar, differing wood species themselves are vastly different in hardness. So you may buy a Cumaru hardwood floor (which is extremely hard and dense, almost 3 times as hard as red oak) with an aluminum oxide infused, UV cured finish and it will resist surface scratching the same as the afore mentioned red oak floor. So the two hardwood floors will perform about the same when it comes to surface scratching and wear through. What you gain from a harder, denser floor like Cumaru or Brazilian Cherry is dent resistance and deep scratch resistance. The harder wood will be tougher to gouge then it's softer counter parts. Always use floor protectors under any piece of furniture to protect your hardwood flooring from surface scratches.





Jeff Dean
Dover Floor Covering
http://www.doverfloorcovering.com