Spring Cleaning your Antique Hardwood Flooring

Spring Cleaning your Antique Hardwood Flooring

It's time for spring cleaning your antique flooring. Raleigh and Durham, NC are known for their beautiful old homes. Hardwood flooring in Durham and flooring in Raleigh needs special attention this time of year.First, you will need to prepare your home for cleaning the flooring. Durham has lots of soccer and other youth sports teams playing ball and you will want to borrow some of those boys to completely remove all the furniture out of the rooms where there is hardwood flooring.

Raleigh dust bunnies need to join the Easter bunny and it is important to move the furniture so that you can really clean and examine the wear patterns on your hardwood flooring. Durham and Raleigh homes typically use red or white oak, heart pine or maple hardwood. The unique beauty of antique flooring includes many imperfections due to years of wear. Don't worry about these small imperfections; what you are looking for is buckling in the boards (can be a sign of movement in your foundation) extremely worn or scuffed sections (especially common near doorways) or gaps in the any of the flooring joints. With the furniture out of the room you may also find sections of flooring in Raleigh and Durham that are discolored due to water damage, sunlight or pet accidents.

If there are substantial changes compared to last year you will want to call in a flooring contractor to examine your flooring. Durham and Raleigh both have many excellent flooring contractors to choose from. If everything looks pretty good it's time to determine what kind of finish you have on your hardwood flooring. Durham homeowners are fortunate because many of the hardwood floors in the area have been maintained using traditional paste waxes, a solvent based finish that is easier to remove and clean than an acrylic based finish.