"We were about to call a refinisher." We hear that a lot from people with a dull wood floor: a gray lane worn toward the back door, hazy patches in front of the sink, footprints that show up again an hour after mopping.
Nine times out of ten, that floor doesn't need refinishing. The finish under all of it is usually fine. What you're looking at is a layer on top of it: fine grit, cooking grease, pet paw oil, and leftover product from years of spray mops and "shine restoring" cleaners. Those shine products are the worst offenders, in our opinion. Each coat dries a little cloudy, and the next one goes down on top of it.
A visit, board by board
Your technician starts by figuring out what kind of floor you have and what finish is on it. We clean solid hardwood, engineered wood and prefinished floors with a factory finish. The tech also looks for bare spots, deep gouges, and boards that have cupped from water, since those change what cleaning can do. You get the price before any work begins.
Loose grit comes up first with a vacuum made for hard floors. Skipping that step means dragging sand across the finish during the cleaning, which is exactly how scratches happen. Then a pH-neutral cleaner goes down and a machine with soft brushes works it over the boards and into the seams between them, breaking up the film and the dirt packed into the grain. The residue is picked up as the machine goes. Very little water touches the floor, never enough to soak into the wood or the seams, and the boards are usually ready for bare feet within an hour or two.
Older floors and newer ones
Blythewood has both kinds in large numbers. Older homes on the big lots of a neighborhood like Birch Springs, one of the town's first subdivisions, are more likely to have solid wood that's been down a long time and refinished once or twice along the way. The newer subdivisions lean toward engineered planks with a factory finish, which hold up well but have a thin top layer that can't be sanded many times, if at all. Engineered floors benefit the most from regular cleaning, because keeping grit off them is the cheapest way to protect that wear layer.
Kitchens, hallways and stairs take the most abuse in either kind of house. We also clean wood in home offices and in small commercial spaces like shops and lobbies.
Sanding and coatings belong to a refinisher
We don't sand, refinish, or apply any coating. No polish, no wax, nothing added to the surface. The finish you have after the cleaning is the finish you had before it, minus the grime. If your floor has scratches through the finish, gray boards where the finish is worn to bare wood, or water damage, it needs a refinishing company, and the tech will tell you that during the walkthrough. Waxed floors and old unfinished wood are a different animal too, so ask before booking if you think you have one.
Booking a cleaning
Wood floors carry our biggest discount, $50 off, on the coupons page. Book a slot through our online scheduler, or phone 803-393-7625 and describe the floor. Between visits, our sister site has practical advice on cleaning a finished wood floor without leaving it dull, and if the rooms next to your wood floors have tile or carpet, they can be cleaned on the same trip.