Well-maintained floors are the cynosure of houseguests. Gharpedia shares some easy-to-implement pointers for flooring maintenance.
Every room in every house – no matter how grand or how humble – will have a floor, a ceiling and walls that need your care and attention.
Just cast a glance around the room you’re in now. There are three givens … floor, walls and a ceiling. The ceiling is generally out-of-reach and requires the least amount of care. The walls are an excellent showcase for your inner interior decorator as well as for various DIY painting or wall papering projects. The floor you walk on however needs attention on a regular basis. So let’s start with caring for everything underfoot.
Hardwood Flooring Maintenance
With the word hardwood, if question arises to your mind that what does it actually means then here we have answer to your doubts. The Hardwood flooring comprises of materials obtained from the trees and nature which is more durable compared with other types. However, there are certain hacks which should be applied to have an appropriate floor care. Let us have look into those steps in detail. The below image of the flooring is the real life view of the hardwood flooring and also find out ways for the hardwood floor maintenance.
General Cleaning and Maintenance Cues:
- To revive your finished hardwood’s shine mix equal parts of distilled white vinegar and vegetable oil and put the mixture in a spray bottle. Work small sections of the floor at a time. Start by spritzing the mixture and rubbing it in with a clean cotton cloth, buff that section until it’s as shiny as can be. Then start on the next section of the floor. And so on and so forth.
- To remove any scuff marks, get out an old clean toothbrush, apply some non-gel toothpaste and scrub off the scuff mark. Then wipe the area clean with a damp cloth or sponge.
- Depending on the size of the scuff mark, put a little petroleum jelly or baby oil on a cloth and work it into the floor to remove the mark. Once it’s gone, go over the area with dry paper towels, making sure there’s not a trace of the slippery jell or oil.
- If a clump of grease drips on the floor cover it with one or two ice cubes. As soon as the grease hardens, carefully scrape it off with the dull side of a knife, an expired credit card or a spatula.
- Boil one quart of water then throw in two bags of black tea. Let it steep for about 20 minutes then dampen a cloth or mop with the tea and wash your wood floor with it. The tea’s tannic acid should cut through grease and grime. Then buff the wood with a clean, soft cloth.
Cleaning a Waxed Hardwood Floor:
Waxing a hardwood floor is not a popular idea, due to the amount of upkeep necessary. But still if you insist on it then wax should be applied in light, even coats. Stop once the floor has the sheen and protection level you desire.
If you want the dirt to come off, but the wax to stay on your floor, use a sponge mop that’s been dipped in a mixture of one-fourth cup of distilled white vinegar and one gallon of water. Wring the mop so that it’s damp and not sopping wet before it touches the floor.
Put a piece of waxed paper between waxings – waxy side down of course – over the mop head and give the floor an once-over.
Though there are various types of mops, using sponge mop to have a hardwood floor care is the best alternative out of all. The following image shows the actual look of the sponge mop.
Sweeping a Hardwood Floor:
In general, Sweeping is very common technique that is adopted widely to remove dry dust and justify floor care. However, there are certain tips which one should keep in mind while looking after hardwood floor care.
A major challenge with hardwood floors is with cleaning them. Here’s sharing some pointers to ease this cumbersome task:
- How about going global and trying a time-tested Japanese method? It basically entails scattering damp tea leaves on the floor. Well, we know that you must be wondering – Won’t this add to the dirt? But relax there’s an element of science involved here … the tea leaves weigh down the dust making sweeping it up an effortless exercise.
- In case you have on your hands…ahem on the floor … a heap of dirt that simply refuses to be swept into the dustpan then just wet a paper towel and blot it. Easy, eh?
Managing Creaky/Squeaky Floors:
Have you ever noticed cracks or some kind of creaky things on floor?
Over the years, though there are thousands of options and types of flooring which are loudly used by the people. Whether it is of any material, wood, laminate hardwood none of them has life time security. Starting from laminate floor caring to vinyl floors all of them get creaky.
However, there are certain defects which are inevitable which needs consistent repairing and floor care.
Start by sweeping corn starch or talcum powder between the noisy floorboards. Once the spaces are completely filled in with the powder, the creaking should be gone.
If the creaking continues, the nails in the floorboard may be loose and need to be hammered back into place. In that case, lay a piece of thin wood or thick cardboard over the part of the floor that seems to creak. This will protect the bare floor or the floor covering (linoleum or carpet) when you pound it with the hammer. But once you hammer down the nails that were loose there should be no more creaking.
Caring For Vinyl And / Or Linoleum Floors:
We often observe vinyl and linoleum flooring around us. But when it comes to vinyl flooring maintenance or take care of linoleum, the work needs advise to follow.
- Cleaning vinyl floors is not an easy task to carry out.If you want to clean and shine your floor between waxings, mix half cup of liquid fabric softener in one gallon of water then mop the floor with the solution. Your floor will get clean and retain its shine.
- If your floor has any wax build-up, pour club soda on a small section of the vinyl flooring. Scrub it in with a brush and give it a few minutes as you start the process on the next small section, then go back to the first section and wipe it off.
- If you don’t want to wax your floor, but it needs to be mopped clean, you can mix one cup of distilled white vinegar into one gallon of water and rinse the floor. The linoleum will become clean and shiny.
- To remove old grease stains from your floor pour cola on the stain and let it stay for one hour. Then wipe it off – both the cola and the stain.
This was all about cleaning vinyl floor but the installation of the same is not a piece of a cake. The certain preplanning and precautions are given in the below link which you need to know before installing the vinyl flooring.
Removing Scuff Marks:
Are you terrified with the unwanted scratch and scuff marks on your floor? See the below picture. Is this is how the scuff mark appears on floor?
There it goes. It is advisable to walk through below notes in order to remove the scuff marks and have the best flooring maintenance.
- Try scrubbing the mark with non-gel toothpaste on a toothbrush or on a dry cloth. Then wipe it clean with a damp sponge or cloth
- Pour a little bit of baking soda on a damp cloth and rub the scuff mark then wipe it with a clean cloth
- Take a gum or a pencil eraser and use it to erase the heel mark
- When a skid mark is not responding to the toothpaste, baking soda or eraser; then rub the mark with nail polish remover. Dab and rub, then quickly wipe it clean with a damp cloth.
Hacks For Tile Flooring Maintenance
A simple cleaning formula is to mix half cup of distilled white vinegar in one gallon of water. Dampen a mop or – if you’re a down-on-your-knees kind of cleaner – dampen a sponge and clean the tile floor. Depending on the ventilation in the tile-floored room the vinegar odour will disappear.
If the floor hasn’t been cleaned in a while and you can see the grime … and you suspect that the floor needs to be disinfected, it’s probably time to mix up some heavy-duty tile tonic.
In a large spray bottle, combine one cup of distilled white vinegar, one cup of rubbing alcohol, one cup of water and three drops of liquid dish detergent. Spray, mop and rinse the tile with plain water.
Interesting Points for the Flooring Maintenance
- Common types of floors include – vinyl or linoleum in the kitchen, tile in the bathroom or entryway … and laminate and hard wood floors in the rest of the rooms.
- Hardwood does not refer to the hardness of the wood. It’s a classification of broad-leaved flowering trees including oak, maple, ash and elm. Aspen is a hardwood tree whose wood is soft. Needle-leaved trees – pine, fir or evergreen – are softwood trees. Mahogany is from a softwood evergreen. Hope we’ve floored you with the varieties of woods!So don’t miss a chance to opt all the tip notes given here to secure wood floor maintenance.
- Most newly installed hardwood floors have a urethane finish. You can tell simply by looking at the floor. If it looks glossy and as if it has a layer of clear plastic on top of the wood, chances are it is a urethane finish. This kind of finish is a shield, protecting the wood from scratches, water damage and other boo-boos.
- Never wax a urethane floor as wax and urethane are not compatible
- If you are rearranging furniture or moving furniture to clean then put old socks (the heavier the better) on the furniture legs. Or rip off pieces from a cardboard box or cut off the bottom half from a milk or juice carton (after washing and drying it) to make a great coaster for furniture legs. You can also use plastic containers that are completely flat on the bottom.
- Socks, cartons and containers will protect the floor from scratches, and they make the furniture a lot easier to move around.
- Stick clear adhesive tape or strips of weather stripping on 6598the bottom of furniture legs so that the wood floor will not be scratched when the furniture is moved. Glue pieces of felt or carpet – pile side down – to the bottom of furniture legs. Self-stick bunion pads and moleskin patches will also serve the same purpose.
- Before you use nail polish remover to take off a scuff mark, test a small area of the floor to make sure that it’s safe to use. If it is and you do use the remover to clean the skid mark, wipe it clean with a damp cloth afterward
- Do not wear high, thin heels on linoleum and some wood floors. The heels will make dents in the flooring.
Therefore, these were all the essential notes one needs to keep in mind while cleaning the floor. Besides this, if you still find it difficult to last long wooden floor and struggles to deal with wooden floor maintenance, go through the below link and find best ways to clean wooden floor.
Conclusion
So, here’s hoping that the floor care pointers in this blog enable you to sustain the quality and lustre of your floors for a long, long time…!And I am sure that as of now these flooring care ideas will be useful to you. Definitely, you will find it easy to clean the flooring of your home without any hesitation using this flooring maintenance tips.
But the idea doesn’t end here. If stains on your wooden floor make you worried and affects the look of your home, here we have kept a solution ready for you. Refer the below link to find out ways that would help you to remove the unnecessary stain marks from the wooden surface.
Moreover, removing white stains from wooden flooring is headache to huge level. If you always keep wondering the ways to overcome through this trouble, have a look in the given link and find best tricks to avoid white stains.
Image Courtesy: Image 2, Image 4, Image 5
Author Bio
Huta Raval – An English Literature and Journalism Topper, Huta Raval has graduated from the L D Arts College, Ahmedabad. Post serving for 23 years in the NBFC and Public Library Sectors her desire for ‘writing the unwritten’ brought her to the creative field of content writing. Her clientele comprises of NGOs, Blogging Platforms, Newspapers, Academic Institutions, et al.