Maintenance Guidelines

Routine Maintenance
With today’s advances in wood flooring stains and finishes, cleaning and maintaining your wood floors has never been easier. Regular maintenance requires little more than your Hardwood Floor Cleaning Kit. If your wood floor has a beveled edge that may collect debris, we recommend you use a soft bristle vacuum attachment. If we have recently refinished your hardwood floors, please continue to use the supplied hardwood floor cleaning product. You can either use the microfiber pad with a manual spray bottle or an automatic spray mop. Both can be purchased at 12th & Oak Floor Co.

Preventive Maintenance

• Sweep or vacuum your floor at least once a week. It’s important to get all the dirt and grit off the floor. Sand and dirt act like a sandpaper on your floor and wear down the finish.
• Do not use the beater bar on vacuums.
• Do not use any vinyl or tile floor care products on a wood floor, we recommend the Hardwood Floor Care Products.
• Use throw rugs both inside and outside doorways to help prevent debris from being tracked onto your wood floors.
• Do NOT wet-mop or steam mop any wood floor. Residual water can dull the finish, damage the wood and leave a discoloring residue.
• Wipe up spills immediately with a slightly dampened towel.
• Do not wax or polish any wood floor.
• Install felt pads under all legs or feet of furniture to prevent scuffing, denting, and scratching. Check and replace felt pads periodically
• Do not walk on your wood floors with cleats, sports shoes, or high heels. An exposed heel can exert the same force upon your floor as an elephant. This kind of impact can dent any floor surface or finish.
• When moving furniture or appliances, do not roll or slide on the wood flooring. Pick the furniture up and set in place.
• Keep your pet’s nails trimmed. Pet nail covers are available online. Indoor dogs, when running around on hardwood floors, can cause extensive damage over time. Softer wood species are more prone to gouge and scratch. Even most durable floor finishes will not prevent this from happening.
• Use area rugs at the main entrances to your home. Small rugs collect grit from your shoes, so you end up having less of it on your floor.  Use area rugs with a sealed bottom where water exposure is present. Water and other liquid drips from the ice maker, sink, dishwasher, toilet, or pet’s water bowl area can eventually damage the flooring when not swiped up.
• Use plastic trays under plants that are on the floor. Constant excessive moisture from the moist plant soil will cause hardwood flooring expansion and discoloration in that area.
• If possible, avoid direct sun exposure to your hardwood floor. Use blinds, curtains, etc. We recommend UV blocking window film on the glass that exposes direct sunlight to the hardwood floor.

Professional hardwood floor deep cleaning is recommended once annually (depending on the amount of traffic). Maintenance or recoat coats may be applied on as needed basis on high traffic floors. Please visit our Deep Clean & Recoat page for more info