Caring and maintain hardwood floors needs the same amount of care you would give to your berber carpet. If you take care and maintain your hardwood floors, they’ll only look better with age. On the other hand, if you abuse and pay no attention to your floor, you’ll be left with very bad looking hardwood floors overtime. Having clean hardwood floors will increase the longevity of your asset.

Here is a list of things that will help preserve your wonderful floor after the wood has been installed:

• Having bristle type mats at all exterior door entries will be helpful as they will collect bigger pieces of grit or rubble that might scratch or damage your new floor in different ways.

• Placing area rugs at all entry points inside the house can be a nice way to decorate your home as well as protect the nice floor.

• Sometimes furniture can damage your floor too, so use protectors that go underneath the furniture to avoid damaging your hardwood floors. You should also check if grit was collected around the furniture every time you sweep. This will minimize the chances of your floor getting scratched.

• All water areas should also have area rugs, the kitchen being one of the most important places. You can never be too safe, so other places would be in front of fridges with an ice maker, dishwasher and the kitchen sink area.

• Moving appliances can sometimes prove to be very challenging on hardwood floors, so anytime you move them around, be sure to use protectors to avoid scratches and marks. Delivery guys might not take the necessary measures to prevent damaging your floor, so you should tell them beforehand to be careful. I would also recommend you use 1/8″ Masonite board that will avoid damage to your floor. Make sure your floor is very clean before using this board because even a small piece of grit can damage your floor and will make all the effort of moving the appliances futile.

I would suggests that you sweep or vacuum the hardwood floors often to avoid the possibility of scratches or other types of damage to your floors when they are being installed. You could also get rid of tools that are unnecessarily on the floor and put them somewhere safe. To be safer, after you clean up the floor, you can cover that part or high traffic areas with Masonite board to avoid any kind of damage. The Masonite boards, which are typical 4×2 sheets that can be had for cheap at home improvement stores or online, are a small price to pay to finally end up with an amazing looking floor.

Come visit Jeremiah’s new website over at hunterdouglasblindsdeals.com which helps people find the best Hunter Douglas Blinds and information they are looking for when remodelling their homes.

Although hardwood floors should last about 40 years, in the real world things happen to damage it over time and sometimes it becomes necessary to remove them. Whether you are interested in removing few pieces without damaging it or to go for hardwood flooring demolition, it will depend on a few factors such as the following:

-Was the original installation done well?

-Is it a floating hardwood floor or one that is glued down?

-What type of floor will you be installing after removing hardwood flooring?

List of Tools

Circular Saw – You’ll need a circular saw for when you need to cut into the floor.

Chisel – You never know when you’ll need to get into a tight groove or push through some glue.

Claw Hammer – When floor panels are stuck up next to a wall area, you’ll need a claw hammer to grab, pull, and rip them out.

Flooring Scraper – The only way you’ll get through a lot of glue is with the flooring scraper.

Pry Bar – These are a necessity when it comes to picking up floor panels that are stuck.

Sledge Hammer – When nothing else will get through, you can always count on your sledge hammer to bust things.

Before removing hardwood flooring It is important to understand what kind of flooring was used and how it was installed before you begin removing it. This will help you choose the right tools for the job.

If you aren’t trying to preserve the wood, do some pre-cuts with your circular saw to make it easy to get started. These should be 1-2 feet areas. If you were not sure how the floor was laid before, you should know after doing this. Make sure you don’t cut down into the foundation.

Steps for removing hardwood flooring

1. Hit each area of the floor with the sledge hammer enough to break things loose, but not so much as to break the foundation.

2. Use your pry bar to lift the panels and panel fragments up off of the foundation. You may find that it is easier if you use the tongued areas of the panels to pick them up out of the floor. Also, if you pull the panels out individually and stack them as you go, you will save a of of cleanup time and may leave the surface area better preserved for installation of the next floor.

3. If there is glue stuck beneath where the panels were, you need to scrape it up with the flooring scraper and the chisel as needed.

If the floor you have removed was glued down, it may be quite a task for you to get your mess cleaned up adequately. In this case there will be glue fragments and stuck pieces of glue that could take hours to clean.

Saw dust and tiny pieces of wood are usually everywhere. If you have a sturdy vacuum you can save some time, but you’ll likely be finding things to clean up manually that will take you quite a few hours to complete.

Niv Orlian is an experienced Home Improvement Adviser who writes articles for his Flooring & Carpet Cleaning online guides.

Visit myflooringhelper.com to learn more about Removing Hardwood Flooring

Repairing scratches in hardwood floors are easier than you may be thinking. Depending on how many scratches there are, sometimes a simple repair kit will make the necessary fix in short time. If the damage is noticeably bad throughout the room, you may have to sand the floors.

Scratches can originate from a variety of items; shoes, moving furniture, dropped items, and other accidents. Many people feel scratches and dings add character to their hardwood floors. One of the main reasons for scratches in hardwood floors comes from moving heavy furniture, with no pads underneath the legs to protect the floor. Even animals with nails can leave their marks.

You should take some preventative steps to prevent yourself from creating the task of repairing scratches in hardwood floors. For example:

• You should consider soft paw caps for dogs or declawing your cats, which will make sure their nails wouldn’t scratch the floor.
• Either purchase pads that stick to the bottom of furniture or consider hiring a professional mover to carefully move your furniture.

Thanks to the ever-growing advancements in repairing scratches in hardwood floors you now have better options. A repair kit can help in fixing minor scratches. Repair kits come with different applications for any color of wood flooring from the lightest to the darkest and are generally easy to apply. Complete instructions come with the kit.

If there are multiple scratches, you may need to sand and completely refinish your floors. Repairing scratches in hardwood flooring using this method can be quite labor and time intensive. Sanders can be rented to remove the old finish. Next, you would have to thoroughly clean the floor before you re-apply finish. This is a very important step, as the application of the finish over a dust-laden floor can result in poor quality results.

Once you are ready to apply the finish, be sure to follow the specific directions for the product you’ve chosen. Most will require multiple applications to ensure a good long-lasting finish.

Repairing scratches in hardwood floors when the entire floor must be refinished can be quite a task for a do-it-yourself project. There are many professional refinishers available. As with any home improvement project, if you choose to hire a professional, get more than one quote and compare services of each company carefully.

Wood floors are a beautiful asset to any home. Taking these few steps to bring the old floors back to life will be very well worth it. After all, hardwood floors can last as long as the home if they are properly maintained.

This article was written by Gregg Hicks of http://www.reliableremodeler.com which provides Internet-based home improvement information and services. Offering homeowners a simple, quick, and free way to access, qualified home improvement remodeling contractors.