Any kind of hardwood floor adds not only charm but beauty to almost any room, but like most types of flooring, they need regular care on a regular basis to maintain their quality appearance. If you’ve been planning to perk up your parquet floor, but you imagined you would have to hire somebody else, think again. All you rally need are these parquet floor maintenance tips.

All parquet floors begin life with a wood base, whether they are pre-finished or not. Parquet tiles are one of the most popular surface materials. Parquet flooring, which came of age about 20 or 30 years ago, is thin and very resistant to damage. The layouts of the wood pieces on parquet make it hard to refinish as well.

Finish Types

The most important thing to find out before caring for your parquet floor is figuring out what type of finish is on it. The parquet floors in older homes usually have varnish, shellac, or a lacquer finish. Newer floors are much more likely to have polyurethane.

Here is a fast way to find out what type of finish you have: take a small cotton ball and soak it in acetone fingernail polish. Lightly rub the cotton ball in an out of the way place on the floor. Look at the cotton ball as well as your floor. If your floor is tacky upon touching and the cotton ball shows a stain, the finish is most likely varnish, shellac or lacquer. If the floor isn’t tacky feeling and the cotton ball is clean, it’s polyurethane.

Daily Care

For daily maintenance on all kinds of floors, regular mopping and sweeping and is recommended. Remember that water and wood do not mix; keep the moisture on the floor minimized. One thing you should not do is damp mop waxed floors.

For extra protection, maintain area rugs at entryways and in heavily trafficked areas. In addition, remember high-heeled shoes as well as boots are wood floor killers. Wood is a natural product, so it can be dented if it takes too much pressure.

Spills

When you have spills on polyurethane floors, you should use a non-abrasive liquid cleaner along with a soft cloth. Shoe marks including scuffs may be removed by putting a liquid cleaner on the spot. Let it sit a few seconds, and then buff it lightly with a very fine # 0000 steel wool pad. Complete the repair applying a non-wax finish material that the floor manufacturer has recommended.

Cleaning on shellacked, lacquered or varnished floors are different. They require a specialized paste wax. Just rub the scuff or the mark with the special paste wax and then allow it to dry. Then just buff the area with a clean, soft cloth. You will need to apply a brand new coat of wax each three to five months, dependent upon the floor traffic.

Scratches

Scratches and scrapes are par for the course when you own parquet floors. But if you treat them correctly, you’ll never imagine that any blemishes ever existed. Here’s a few hints to repairing parquet floor marks:

A touch up stick made of wax is used to color in the target areas . Just color the scratch with the stick and then return with a putty knife and gently scrape away any excess. Finish by buffing the area.

Home improvement stores sell products similar to these markers except that they contain wood stain instead. Use these kind of markers to color the scratch but keep in mind that wood consists of many shades of a given color, so you do not have to make an exact match the wood.

If you have a parquet floor that is badly damaged, put some masking tape along the tiles surrounding the area. Take the finish off, re-stain the tile and apply new finish.

photo by janelle, Creative Commons Attribution