If you’ve been looking at timber flooring for sale, you’ll need to consider its upkeep and what you will do when you encounter spills, scuffs and blemishes.
Perhaps if you’ve never lived in a home with timber flooring, you feel apprehensive about purchasing a property that already has beautiful wooden floors. Ignore those horror stories about costly repairs! While to a small extent those stories are true – a total refinish of the floors by a professional contractor can be expensive – you can repair blemishes yourself. And it won’t be a massive task either. In fact even the average weekend warrior armed with a little know-how will manage.
Surface Damage
Don’t let the thought of day-to-day surface damage put you off when considering timber flooring for sale. Surface damage to timber floors is just that – a very minor set of blemishes, stains or scratches that haven’t penetrated the wood surface.
Gouges that are deep and run about a quarter of an inch deep aren’t surface damage, though. Those are major repairs and better left to the professionals.
To make a start on repairing your wooden floors, assess the damage carefully. Also take into consideration your own knowledge and skills when it comes to DIY home repairs. If the damage is only on the surface of your floors, you should be able to repair them inexpensively with little skill required.
Repairing Your Floors
- Start repairing the surface area of your timber floors by removing any furniture.
- Sweep and mop the floor and give it time to dry.
- Take an extremely fine grit steel wool and rub the damaged area gently. Frequently wipe the dust using a damp cloth to gauge how you’re doing.
- Each time you rub away the dust, assess your progress. You don’t need to be pedantic about it – simply work towards removing and blending blemishes as opposed to working down to bare wood.
- Repeat the above two steps as many times as you need to until the timber flooring is spotless. Keep in mind that any dirt or dust present when you apply the wood finish will cause more blemishes.
Choosing Your Floor Finish
The next step is to decide on which type of wood floor finish you’d like to use. There are a number of different types.
- Polyurethane floor finishes tend to last the longest. If this is the timber floor finish you choose, make sure it is “self-levelling” which means it will dry without lap lines. A lamb’s wool applicator is best for applying polyurethane. Work from left to right across the floor in 3 foot sections at a time at a quick pace. When you get to the next section, work from left to right again. Try to complete the whole floor without stopping to you can avoid lap lines. This should be an easy task even for the not-so-avid DIYer.
- Wood wax is another common wood floor finish. It can also be referred to as Urethane Emulsion. This product is a liquid that you simply mop onto the floor in a couple of coats and leave each coat to try in between. You’ll have to carry out the occasional re-waxing if you use the wood wax of you can use a floor buffer to polish the floor. The greatest advantage to using wood wax is that it is a lot less daunting if you’ve not worked with timber flooring before. There’s also no odour compared to the polyurethane.
Whichever wood floor finish you decide on, repairing blemishes on timber flooring for sale is certainly within the scope of most people’s abilities.