Floor Cleaning

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Floors need to be deep cleaned and protected prior to painting and purchasing of furniture.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/garden/18pragmatist.html?_r=0

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November 17, 2010 Fixing Up Floors in Time for the Holidays By BOB TEDESCHI I’VE got a lot of tools in my toolbox, but the best one by far is denial.

For many weeks of the year, this tool helps me cope with any job that might otherwise ruin my day.

Then comes the week before Thanksgiving, when denial is just about the only tool that gathers dust.

After a torrent of work, the house always looks fine, just in time to put the turkey in the oven. Then, invariably, my wife and I notice the wood floors, which look as if they’ve been used for many years by a family that’s in deep denial.

By then, naturally, it’s too late to do anything. Our guests say nothing about the floors because they are kind. Kind enablers.

This year I’m rewriting the script. I’ve resolved to spruce up the floors, quickly and without calling in a team of workers to sand and refinish. Just my wife, Karen, and me, and $70 or so of supplies at most. To keep it real in the time-pressed holiday season, I set aside just one evening for the job.

For advice, I turned to four people: Jeff Jewitt, the chief executive of Homestead Finishing Products and the author of “Taunton’s Complete Illustrated Guide to Finishing” (Taunton Press); Michael Dresdner, an author and blogger on the subject of wood finishing (MichaelDresdner.com); Bob Flexner, the author of “Understanding Wood Finishing” (Fox Chapel Publishing) and Mark Votta, an owner of the Kenvo Floor Company in Exeter, R.I. Among other things, Mr. Votta’s company installed the oak flooring at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston, where the Celtics play — a good proxy for what my children do to our floor.

The professionals’ advice yielded three options: a basic liquid floor wax, a tinted wax and cleaner, or a polyurethane polish. They can all save you from holiday embarrassment, but some strategizing is in order.

If you plan to drop $4,000 on a professional refinishing job after the holidays, an inexpensive liquid floor wax and cleaner, like SC Johnson One Step (about $7 for 22 ounces), will do fine. But if, next year, you’ll try a do-it-yourself refinishing job, don’t wax now, because all that wax will have to come off first.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The first step is identifying what’s on your floor. Here’s some help: the vast majority of wood floors are coated with polyurethane. Some people have wax on their floors, either because they inherited an old home or because they used a cleaner that contains wax.

How to know? Pour a few drops of water in an inconspicuous place. If, after 10 minutes, that area has turned white, it’s probably wax. Or wipe a small area with mineral spirits and a clean rag. Wax will smudge the rag; polyurethane won’t.

A smaller group of people will have varnish or shellac finishes, which are usually orange in tone. But if you have a floor with wax, varnish or shellac, your last-minute spruce-up job comes down to one option: liquid floor wax and cleaner, like Bruce Light ’n’ Natural Liquid Paste Wax With Cleaner, or Wood Preen (both about $10 for a quart), among many others. (Johnson’s One-Step is another option, but not on waxed floors.)

“If you really have little time, this is the way to go,” said Mr. Dresdner. “If it looks better, great. Invite the guests over. If not, you won’t hurt a thing.”

I tried this on part of my floor, and it worked nicely. Wood Preen brought a light-amber hue to areas with no remaining polyurethane finish, and it obscured water stains. I considered using it on my entire floor, and given my history, I could imagine using it every few months as a perpetual stop-gap measure.

But because my floor had no wax, I had two other options that could save future work.

The first is a breed of products meant for polyurethane floors that still have a complete finish, albeit a dull one. This list includes Minwax Hardwood Floor Reviver, Bona Hardwood Floor Polish, Basic Coatings Hardwood Floor Refinisher (each costs about $20 or less a quart) and Pledge Wood Floor Finish (around $6 for 27 ounces).

To understand how these products work, it helps to understand how professionals work. When a crew rumbles around your house with a 200-pound sander, that tool is abrading the wood surface to give polyurethane something to adhere to.

These bottled resurfacers bond with the existing polyurethane, so no sanding is necessary. They also top the floor with a (thin) layer of new finish.

Brilliant? Absolutely. And they can shine up your floor quickly.

But prep is important. Clear your furniture, dust, vacuum and wash the floor thoroughly. Don’t bother with floor cleaners, Mr. Jewitt said; soap can sometimes leave a film. Instead, mix one part white vinegar (about $2 a quart) to 10 parts water and use a microfiber mop (Bona’s is about $20) or a dampened towel.

“Just get it as wet as a healthy dog’s nose,” he said. “You don’t want to get too much water between the boards, because they could swell.”

That is also why you don’t want to use these water-based resurfacing products without testing them in a hidden corner, or apply them on bare wood. Which is exactly what I did. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

Applying these products is easy. I used my Bona mop, which comes with an applicator pad for just such jobs, but you could also use a standard kitchen mop or attach a paint pad to a broom handle.

If you lack ceiling lights, set up a portable flood lamp. For the resurfacers other than Minwax and Basic Coatings, which carry toxicity warnings, keep the windows closed so that the products don’t dry while you work. (The smell won’t bother most people.) Finally, work toward your exit and stay off the floor for an hour or more as it dries.

If, before you start, you don’t know if you have bare wood, don’t guess. Wipe a little water on a dull area. If it soaks in and darkens the wood, it’s bare. Or, Mr. Flexner said, study the floor in bright light. If it has any shine at all, it still has finish. “A lot of people confuse color with finish,” he added. “They think there’s still finish on the wood until all the color is gone.”

The resurfacing products brightened the parts of my floor that still had polyurethane. The section with Minwax looked marginally better than the sections with Bona or Pledge, the resurfacers I used, but the Minwax did have that toxicity warning, and it was the only one of the products that made my eyes water.

The resurfacers did nothing for the bare wood on which I mistakenly applied it. Luckily, my floor didn’t swell or buckle, as Mr. Jewitt had warned.

What to do, in general, about bare wood?

Mr. Dresdner recommended a kit called Varathane Renewal (about $80), which uses a two-step process to put a new layer of finish on a floor: you coat the floor with a product that, when dry, adheres to a fresh coat of polyurethane. Mr. Votta recommended a similar two-step process, using TyKote (about $80) as the first coat, and Bona Traffic (about $109) on top. “Traffic is very user friendly,” he said. “You could slop it on with a wire brush, and it’d still look great.”

The big advantage of these products? No sanding. The big drawback? They can involve an entire day of work or more, so they strain the definition of “quick fix” — my holiday parameter. Also, retailers who carry these products are scarce, at least in the greater New York area.

So, for my worn-bare floors, I had one not-so-great alternative: liquid paste wax, like Wood Preen; that product is tinted and will give the bare areas some color. Of course, with this step I just bought myself another chunk of work when I finally get around to a proper refinish, with that 200-pound sander and all.

No matter. When the Thanksgiving guests arrive, I’m sure they’ll say nice things, and I’m sure I’ll once again bask in denial. I’ll try not to blame them for it.

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Bona Hardwood Floor Polish

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Purchased the BONA Hardwood floor polish to apply following next first floor cleaning.

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Hmmm... not such good reviews on the BONA Product ... May try this one instead ....

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Minwax-1-Qt-High-Gloss-Hardwood-Floor-Reviver-60950/100580965