Harwood Floors - Cleaner than Carpets!

So many homes these days are saying goodbye to the carpet fabrics, especially when there’s so much information on just how disgustingly dirty they can be under that pile! Inevitably, over time, they get drinks spilt on them, food dropped and forgotten, and animals living both above and beneath the fabric. As far as I’m concerned they’re nothing but a health hazard. Give me exotic hardwood flooring, like bamboo hardwood or a beautiful maple hardwood surface to walk on any day, or maybe the magnificent splendor of oak hardwood flooring. Clean, hygienic, and truly beautiful.

I’m always hearing folks complain about how difficult it is to keep their hardwood floors, especially old floor that have been neglected. Now I’m not an expert in writing, but I’ll try my best to pass on a little experience on the ease of cleaning hardwood floors in eligible English. You see, my husband and I have just moved into a beautiful new home. The house isn’t really new as it was built way back in 1953. I immediately fell in love with this little ranch home the minute I stepped foot in the door. The home is unpretentious and it was in dreadful state when we first visited it, but the moment I saw the marvelous Bruce hardwood floors, I knew that this was the house for us.



We had a number of hurdles to overcome though after buying this home. You see, I am allergic to fleas and the house was heavily infested. We don’t personally have pets, but the former owner had two large hounds and three cats. The only rooms that had fitted carpets were the smaller of the two bedrooms and the bathroom. We removed the rugs and guess what we discovered in the small bedroom? More hardwood floors! I was annoyed that the home was in such a shambles, but the hardwood floors immediately lifted my mood.

Cleanliness and sanitation was obviously not a major concern of the previous owner. We had to bomb the house twice to get rid of the fleas. She left hurriedly without taking the time to rid the pests herself. She also had no time to tidy the house - ever by the way it looked! My beautiful hardwood floors were soaked with urine in some areas and they were covered with dirt and grime in others. However, the hardwood floors still managed to appeal to me despite their state. My biggest worry was restoring them back to their natural beauty.

The first priority was to deal with was the stench. I am finicky about odors and I’m not used to being around pets, so the urine smell had to go straight away. My husband covered the basement floor with epoxy paint. Ironically the strong chemical odors that would make a normal person run for the hills, but it made me very happy. I was just delighted that the pet odors were gone, at least downstairs.

But what about my beloved hardwood floors? I decided to do a little research before I did anything rash. The flea infestation may have been a good thing because I couldn’t stay in the home until they were gone. This gave me a bit of time to read about eliminating pet odors from hardwood floors. I am very glad that I researched prior to cleaning the floors because it could have led to complete disaster.

I discovered that you should never wash hardwood floor that have been sprayed by pets. Some cleaning agents may even make the odours worse. Others can lock the odours into the wood and they can never be removed. My first instinct was to use a cleaner like Murphy’s Oil soap, but this is one of the cleaning products that can lock those pet odors into the wood.

Don’t hesitate and don’t complicate! There’s only one way that that’s the right way, and by that I mean purchase the proper product for the job at hand. Got urine smells, then buy a urine odour remover from any pet store of retail outlets selling such products. Wal-Mart should do the trick. You simply wet the floors with the odour remover, allow to dry out, and voila! Still smells? Rinse and repeat until it’s gone, and it will go, no matter how bad it got!

This did the trick. Liquid pet odor removers work extremely well on wood surfaces. After the odour was gone, I was free to wash and polish my beautiful hardwood floors and now I can say that I really do love our beautiful new house. Maybe i'll post some pics if the webmaster allows it.