Scratches in Hardwood Floor 

Want to Get Rid of Scratches in Your Hardwood Floor?
By Christopher W Smith

If you've lived with hardwood floors, you already realize just how easily they can be damaged. With spills, accidents, and scratches incurred through everyday living, your floors soon don't look quite as nice as they did when they were new. If this is the case with you, you'd probably welcome some tips for repairing the scratches and gouges on your floors and restoring some of their new appearance again. If so, read on.

It's possible that if you only have light scratches, they may not have gone down through the wax floor coating to damage the hardwood under it. By looking carefully at the scratch you can determine if any of the lighter-colored wood is showing through. If it is, there's a good chance that the flooring is scratched. If not, all you need to do is strip off the wax and reapply a fresh coat. Buff the floor well, and the scratches should disappear completely.

There are times when a scratch will penetrate down to the wood without actually scratching the wood itself. In these cases, it may be the stain and/or the varnish that have been scratched. By removing the wax coating and contacting the flooring manufacturer to obtain matching stain and varnish, you'll be able to repair the scratch. You will follow a procedure that is similar to that used to finish the entire floor, but you'll use a q-tip as your paintbrush. After repairing the stain and varnish, you can re-wax the floor and buff it back to a new-looking shine.

If the wood underneath has actually been scratched, the repair will be more difficult. You may want to try the repair yourself, but be aware that it is not an easy job. You will need to use an electric sander to sand the scratch out without doing further damage to the floor. If you don't think you're up to making a repair that's this extensive, you will need to contact the manufacturer of the flooring and request a recommendation of someone you can get to do the repair for you.

For the sake of the budget, you may decide to give the project a try. What you'll be doing is stripping down any boards that were damaged by the scratch to the bare wood. The wax coating will need to be removed first. Then, following manufacturer's instructions, you'll have to strip anything else that's on the boards including coloring agents, varnish, and sealants.

A shallow scratch will be fairly easy to remove using an electric sander. All you'll have to do is lightly sand the area immediately surrounding the scratch. However, if the scratch is deeper and you have to sand down farther to get rid of it, you'll have to sand the entire board or boards in order to make the floor smooth and level again. Once the boards are prepared, you can reapply the stain, varnish, and the wax. The final step will be to buff the entire floor until it sparkles like new.

You know you want hardwood floors - visit RefinishedHardwood.com for more tips on removing pet stains on hardwood floors and hardwood refinishing problems and make have the floor you've always wanted.

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You are now one step closer to knowing how to repair anything and everything.