How to Refinish Wood Floors You can clean and refinish a scratched wood floor without having to sand down to bare wood Q: My oak floors are covered in scratches. Do I have to sand down to bare wood to get rid of them?—Susan Bankhead, Meridian, Idaho A: The Editors of This Old House reply: Not necessarily. If the scratches don't go all the way through to the wood, you can scuff-sand your floors with a buffer and apply a fresh coat or two of finish. The process is easier and less expensive than sanding down to bare wood and takes less time. In a few hours your floors will look as good as new. The job requires using a buffer, which you can rent at a home center, and a vacuum to suck up dust. If you've never used a buffer before, practice in the middle of the room until you get a feel for how to maneuver it. Once the finish is roughed up, we put on a water-based polyurethane, which can be recoated in 3 hours. Oil-based polys are cheaper, but each coat takes about 8 hours to dry.

With either finish, we recommend a fresh coat every two years or whenever the floor looks worn. Stick to that routine and your floors will never wear out. Remove all the furniture, and spray the floor with a hardwood flooring cleaner or your own mix of 10 parts water to 1 part white vinegar. Gently wipe the floor with a terry-cloth mop or a towel wrapped around a mop head. Close the windows and doors to keep dust contained in the room you're sanding. Using 180-grit sandpaper, hand-sand the perimeter of the room and any nooks that the buffer can't reach. Rub with the grain 4 to 6 inches out from the baseboard, working over each board until the finish dulls and a powder forms. Don't use a sanding block—it might miss uneven spots in the floor. Stick a maroon buffing pad to the buffer, and put on a dust mask. Move the buffer from side to side across the floor in the direction of the grain, overlapping each course by 6 inches. The old finish turns to powder as you go, so it's easy to see the areas you've covered.

Keep the buffer moving at all times, but stop every 5 minutes or so and vacuum the pad. Leave the room for 10 to 15 minutes to let the powder settle. Put a clean filter in the vacuum, and sweep the floor using a felt-bottomed attachment. Work in line with the flooring strips, then sweep across them to get any powder that settled between the boards. Finally, dry-tack the floor with a microfiber cloth pushed with the grain. Cut in Along the Edges Cover your shoes with booties and your nose and mouth with a respirator that has organic vapor canisters. Strain the finish through a cone filter into a clean plastic watering can, minus a sprinkler head, then pour some strained finish into a small plastic container. Brush a 3-inch-wide stripe beside the baseboards at a point farthest from your exit door. You'll have lap marks if the edge of the stripe starts to dry, so stop after 10 minutes and go to the next step. Roll Out the Poly Pour out a 1-inch-wide stripe of finish in line with the grain—only as much as you can spread in 10 minutes.

Using a long-handled roller with a ¼-inch nap cover, roll out the finish with the grain, then across it. best way to clean unfinished wood furnitureOverlap each pass and work quickly to keep a wet edge. best solution to clean mini blindsAfter 10 minutes, brush more finish along the edge, then pour and roll again for 10 minutes. best handheld vacuum cleaner 2015Continue until the floor is covered. direct energy duct cleaning specialWait 3 hours before recoating and a week before putting back furniture.leather cleaning wipes car

As you're cleaning, you may find deep scratches that go through the finishprice to clean air conditioner coils and into the wood. You usually can't make these scratches disappear completely, but you can make them a lot less noticeable. If your floor is as light or lighter than the floor shown here, first wet the scratch with mineralA wet coat of mineral spirits produces approximately the same look as a coat of polyurethane. And on a light-colored floor, it might darken the scratch just enough tohide it. If that doesn't work, apply some wood stain to the scratch using a cottonBecause the scratch is rough and porous, it will absorb a lot ofSo begin experimenting with a stain that's much lighter than the tone of your floor and wipe away the excess stain right after you apply it. For best results, use two stain colors to match the light and dark patterns in

the wood grain (Photo 7). If your floor has a high-traffic area where the clear finish is completely worn away, wet the area with mineral spirits to see what it will look like with a coat ofIf it looks good, clean the area thoroughly, apply a coat of polyurethane and give it at least twoThen you can buff and recoat the new polyurethane along with the rest of the floor. Look out for ridges. The buffer will eat right through the finish down to bare wood at high spots. floor is colored with wood stain, you'll be left with light-colored strips where the stain has been rubbed off. Photo 8 shows how a solid-wood floor can buckle in high humidity. But smaller ridges, where the wood strips cup slightly or one plank sits a bit higher than the next, can cause just as much trouble. If you can flatten a ridge by standing on it, fasten it down with a finishing nail or two. If you can't flatten the ridge, you'll have to roughen the area by hand using sanding screen.