Finishing and Refinishing

[kmealy]

One of my daughters just moved into her first house.  The prior owners were, gracefully put, not cleaning fanatics.  The bedrooms all have hardwood floors with an in-the-wood finish.  There is a lot of dirt in the (red oak) floors to the point where you can see exactly the traffic patterns and where furniture sat.  Is there any hope of getting this flooring clean without having to sand down and refinish?   We had enough contents moving, cleaning, painting, plumbing and carpentry work to do on  move-in to allow time to even test a water-based cleaning on the floors.

[Jim Frye]

I am in the process of installing new hardwood flooring in three areas of our house.  The topcoat is a UV cured conversion varnish (5 applications) from the factory.  The installation/care instructions specifically warn against using products such as oil soaps, liquid or paste waxes, or cleaners that contain lemon oil, tung oil, silicone, or amonia.  It is also recommended not to use wet mops, damp-mops, or water on the floor as it can cause damage to the wood itself.  Is it possible to know what the finish is on the floors?  How old are the floors?  If the finish is a polyurethane varnish, you might try a wipe down with mineral spirits to see if that cleans the surface.  If the finish itself has broken down, or worn away, in the traffic areas, you may have no other choice than to sand & finish.  A good quality flooring dealer will have some cleaning products made especially for hardwood floors.   

[ynoT]

Murphy soap comes to mind, Kmealy. I've seen few folks try it with fine results.

My neighbor also rented one of those commercial sanders that look like carpet cleaning machine. But it swirled gently over the floor with hardly making dust. After all the clean up and finish, the floor looked magnificent.

Tony

[jtomlinson2354402]

I would use a steamer unit after cleaning with sweeper and a light wet mop to get up the "hard" dirt. I would not recommend a Shark Steamer (just check for reviews on same to see why) but a more durable one from http://www.vapamore.com/ or the like. Jim