Hardwood Floor Scratch Repair

by Christopher W Smith

If you own a hardwood floor, you know just how fragile your beautiful flooring can sometimes be when it comes to spills, accidents, or scratches.  In this article, we're going to present some strategies for repairing damage to hardwood flooring.  Although you can apply our techniques to any hardwood floor damage, we are going to be focusing on scratches and gouges.

When your hardwood floor receives a light scratch, it is always possible that the scratch has not penetrated through the wax coating to the actual wood.  Examine the scratch carefully.  If you see a lighter color (the color of the actual wood) deep inside the scratch, you've probably damaged the wood.  If not, simply strip your wax coating and reapply it, finishing with a good buffing.

Sometimes, even if a scratch has penetrated to the wood, it has not cut into the subsurface wood.  Instead, it has just lightly damaged the wood varnish or coloring.  For repairing hardwood floors with this problem, contact the manufacturer of your flooring to get a small amount of varnish or coloring that matches your floor.  Follow directions, except that you will be doing your hardwood floor scratch repair in miniature, using a q-tip to re-stain the scratch.  After it is stained, apply wax coating and buff.

If, on the other hand, your hardwood floor scratch repair needs to be more extensive, you have a couple of options.  First, you can do the work yourself, which will require an electric sander and is a little bit tricky.  If this doesn't seem like a good option, you can ask the manufacturer of your flooring to recommend someone to help you with hardwood floor scratch repair.

If you are going to do the repair yourself, basically you will be stripping a single board (or more than a single board, if the scratch is long) down to the bare wood.  First, strip the wax coating on your floorboards.  Next, consult your flooring manufacturer to find out the right way to strip any sealant, coloring, or varnish from the board.

When this is finished, you can use an electric sander to sand the board smooth.  If the scratch does not dig in too deeply, you may be able to get away with a light sanding of just the area surrounding the scratch.  Otherwise, the entire board will need sanding and leveling.  Once the scratch has disappeared, you can reapply varnish and coatings and then (after they have dried) reapply a wax coating and buff for a final shine.

Visit us for more information on installing hardwood flooring, refinishing wood floors and cleaning hardwood floors.

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