Monday, July 18, 2011 Floor Fail
You know when you have one of those weeks, that everything you touch turns to dirt. Well hello week of dirt, I have finally met you! Let us explore what not to do when it comes to 81 year old floors, or , er...wood floors in general.
Swiffer Wet was the culprit in this scenario. A Swiffer Wet was left on the wood floor over night. The wet pad saturated the wood leaving a rather dark spot. So we figured we would lightly buff it out....
Ahhh! My heart dropped. Joey's heart dropped. I don't know what we expected. We were sanding the top layer of our floor off. Duh. It was going to be raw. But grey? Eww...
So the next step? Stain it, right? Color match the preexisting wood and it will look perfect, right? Right? I kept telling myself that. So we bought a small can of Minwax and color matched it to our preexisting floor...
So with a brush Joey lightly painted the stain on the raw wood, and noticed it looked awfully dark.
So we panicked again, and wiped wiped wiped. And now we are back to having a dark spot.
And with that we bring you our week of major fails! Check back this week to see what not to do when you are painting curtains, garlic growing gone terribly wrong, and a leaky window. After that we will be back with a bunch of stuff done right!
Reader Comments (4)
I had a similar issue with a house I was renting a couple years ago (a not-then-potty-trained dog vs older wood floors similar in color to yours). I was moving out and did not want to be charged for the damage (especially since it was military housing slated to be torn down a year later). So to the internet I went. I tried hydrogen peroxide to bleach the stain out, which made it lighter, but barely. So I sanded and poured and sanded and poured. It got quite a bit lighter, but was gray-based (like your stain) which clashed with the yellow-based floor color. I frantically searched through my house for something to help, and came up with food coloring. I played around with it (first mixing it with water to dilute it, then just using straight food coloring). I also used one of those stain markers used to touch up scratches on furniture. It worked! (Mostly due to the food coloring once the stain was light enough) I then applied a few coats of polyurethane to match the shiny finish on the rest of the floors. I'm not sure how good any of this was for the floor, so try at your own risk. On my final walk-through at move-out, the landlord had no clue, it completely blended in with the rest of the floor.
@jennifer ohhhhhh thanks for the idea! i never thought of that! isn't necessity truly the mother of great invention?! will discuss with hubbs and see if we can try this out!
So, how did it go? Did it work out? We had to repair our hardwood floors because termites were feasting on them so we just bought some new hardwood flooring in roughly the same color and patched. The stain wasn't exactly the same but since the floors are hickory, there is quite a bit of variation in color anyway so it's not too obvious. Maybe if the food coloring doesn't work, you could try sanding down the entire slat where the stain was removed and then restain the whole slat. The different slats tend to be different colors anyway so it might not look so obvious.
@colleen i think that would be perfect! we haven't tried the food dye yet - we still need to buy some. but i like the idea of restaining the whole piece of wood. Thanks!