Wood You Like F.A.Q. & News

Cast iron buffing block now with 100% guarantee

The most effective and eco-friendly way to maintain your natural wooden floor the easy way! 100% guaranteed!

Every wooden floor benefits from maintenance treatments. Modern polishes are easy to apply and our eco-friendly 7kg weighing cast-iron buffing block makes light work of it.

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New Wood Floor Guide: "3 Easy Steps to Clean and Mantain Your Parquet Floor"

3 Easy Steps to Clean and Maintain Your Parquet Floor (or any other wooden floor)

What is a nicer surprise than to remove the carpet from a room in your home and to discover a valuable original parquet floor is hiding beneath it! Especially when you consider that installing a brand new parquet floor costs around £ 125.00 - £ 145.00 per sq m. And that’s just for a simple herringbone or basket weave pattern.

Your new discovery will at least need some TLC to bring back its grand lustre it had before it was ‘covered-up’. Follow our “3 easy steps" below and you will start enjoying your valuable, easy to clean and anti-allergic original parquet floor in no time at all.

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New Wood Floor Guide: "7 Easy Steps to Repair/Restore Your Parquet Floor"

7 Easy Steps To Repair/Restore You Parquet Floor

What is a nicer surprise than to remove the carpet from a room in your home and to discover a valuable original parquet floor is hiding beneath it! Especially when you consider that installing a brand new parquet floor costs around £ 125.00 - £ 145.00 per sq m. And that’s just for a simple herringbone or basket weave pattern.

Your new discovery will at least need some TLC to bring back its grand lustre it had before it was ‘covered-up’, see our “3 easy steps to clean and maintain your parquet floor” for this.

If your floor is missing some blocks, has damaged blocks – damages from plumbing comes to mind - or you notice areas where the blocks no longer stuck firmly down on the underfloor just follow the 7 Easy Steps below to repair/restore it and start enjoying your valuable, easy to clean and anti-allergic original parquet floor in no time at all. For all materials needed we’ve included a list of quality products underneath.

Read more....

How to restore a Parquet floor - what to be aware of

This week we received another question on the subject of a rediscovered parquet floor:

Good Afternoon,

I wonder if I could pick your brains a little.  We have just uncovered a parquet floor - 6 bricks @ 4.5"x7/8" in blocks at 90 degree angles to one another. Floor area is 14'x11' & rectangular - no cupboards or inaccessible areas.  Mahogany wood or so I'm told - the wood is certainly very dark all the way through.  The floor has had some previous repairs after two rooms were knocked together & plumbing works (around 6 years ago).  We are planning on restoring the floor to leave it exposed now.

To do so we need to sand the floor & then seal & varnish it (need a pretty heavy duty finish as the only back door to our garden is through the living room & we have a dog with a number of very scratchy nails on each corner).

I wondered if you could answer the following questions:

1. Assuming that the floor is prepared & suitably coloured already would it be correct to say that I would need to seal the floor first (~4 hours to dry) then varnish 2-3 times (~ 8 hours to dry between each coating).  Is this about right (depending on the specific instructions on any manufacturers products of course)?
2. I am planning on having some quotes for professionals to do this work as well as costing it to do ourselves but I wondered could you give me some sort of 'ball park' idea of the cost of such a renovation?
3. What sort of time frame would you expect such renovations to take?
4. I cannot seem to find anyone registered with the BWFA in or near Wiltshire.  Are you able to recommend (or warn me to avoid) any companies local to me?

Hope you can help me - I'm trying to educate myself sufficiently as I have invited a couple of companies to quote to me.

Thank you so much,

Kind Regards

Mrs S N

Our tips on what any company quoting for a particular job like this should do/use and products we recommend:

Thank you for your question. Nice find a floor like that!

Who ever is going to restore this floor should note the following: any loose blocks? If so with what material were they glued to the floor - presumably bitumen. Any loose blocks should be cleaned off this black stuff as best as possible, likewise with the any visual residue on the underfloor. Then the blocks can be glued back to the underfloor with modern adhesive, but bitumen residue will have an effect on the bonding time (normally 4 - 8 hours, with bitumen involved it could take upto 24 - 36 hours!).

Also, when sanding the floor use a belt-sander not a drum-sander (ask any company who's quoting for this work what type of sander they're plannig to use and insist on a belt-sander).
A hard wearing finish could indeed be varnish - modern varnish sometimes include this so-called sealer - but we ourselves prefer HardWaxOil natural which brings out the natural character of the wood better than varnish, is hard wearing and small damages can be easier repaid than when varnish is used.

It's hard for us to give you a 'ball-park' figure without having seen the floor in situ - i.e. not knowing exactly the amount of work it would involve - but between low-end and high-end of work needed: between £ 35.00 and £ 50.00 per sq m ex VAT including the finishing materials.

Hope this helps

Kind Regards
Wood You Like Ltd

Hi Karin,

Just a quick note to thank you so much for you immediate reply which was much appreciated & which very definitely does help.  I also would like to compliment you on your extensive website which I have found fabulously useful & informative.

Kind Regards

Mrs S N

(If you have a question on this subject, or any other wood flooring related issue, fill in this simple form and we will personally give you our best advice as quick as possible)

Read also our Wood Floor Guide: "7 Easy Steps to Repair/Restore Your Parquet Floor"

Two questions: one problem, one answer - sort of

Recently we received two very similar questions through our Get Free Advice web form:
Question one (from the chair of a village hall)
I am looking for some advice. We have a village hall floor with parquet floor 17.1m x 8.6m which is in need of some attention. There is a residual lacquer finish on approx 60% of the floor with the high traffic areas with little or no protection.

We have a weekly clean which involves a good brush and then a hard floor cleaning product (Carefree Mop & Shine). The hall itself is well used and the hirers are not necessarily always diligent with sweeping the floor. We are likely to have water spillages on occasions that are cleaned up after an hour, sand spills which are cleaned up but residue could be an issue, finally a dance class who do or don’t dust the floor (depending on who you talk to) with French chalk. Your comments on the above would be useful please.

What would your recommendation be for the finish: lacquer or hard wax oil? Lacquer is what we have had before but hard wax oil might be better because of the ability to keep on top of the wearing areas.

Finally is there any advice you can provide on maintenance regime, cleaners, treatments and equipment. At present we have hand brooms and mops used by both hires and our cleaner. We also have tiled and linoleum floors in changing rooms, kitchen, corridors and reception areas. One thought was we should use some form of vacuuming to improve the cleanliness of the hall and better preserve the floor finishes.

Many Thanks
Mr J N (chair)

Question two (from The Guardian Saturday Magazine):
I write for the Space Solves section of The Guardian Saturday magazine, answering readers questions on their cleaning and stain removal problems. We have had a query in regarding a parquet floor. Could you advise?

"Our parquet flooring was installed about 28 years ago and has a light to mid yellowish tinge. Where it has been heavily trodden on, it is black while other parts are stained and faded. I usually clean it with a damp soapy (liquid Flash - not too much! or Ecover washing up liquid!) string  mop, no more than that.  Then go over with a clean damp mop. Do you have any suggestion for how I could lift the stains?"

Mrs S Z (The Guardian)

To both questions we replied (roughly) with the same answer:

Thank you for your question, we will try to advice you to the best of our knowledge.

A wooden floor with damaged lacquer finish has indeed lost its capacity to protect the wood from water spills and might display dark (blackened) areas where the lacquer layer has vanished almost completely. To keep mopping the floor with water will only make this worse and you might end up with very deep dark patched where the water has had chance to penetrate the wood constantly.

We strongly recommend the floor to be restored as soon as possible to reduce the chance of it being beyond simple repair. We suggest you search for a reputable company in your area that can sand the floor to remove the old lacquer layer completely and to apply a hard wearing, possibly HardWaxOil for easy maintenance and easy small repairs, new finish layer.

Instead of weekly mopping with clean and shine we recommend the use of WoCa cleaning soap (Woodcare Denmark, TripTrap) which contains both a non-abrasive detergent and a polish so the floor will be cleaned and protected against dirt and drips in one go. For such a large area we recommend the use of a professional buffing machine that can tackle both the weekly cleaning as well as the quarterly additional maintenance to feed both the wood as the wax wear layer.

Such a machine can also easily be used on the other floor covering types you mentioned.
As for daily care we would rather advice the use of a soft broom instead of a vacuum cleaner. Two reasons for this: sweeping a floor shows 'optical' proof the activity is a useful one  and secondly to prevent damages to the floor from damaged vacuum cleaner wheels or choosing the wrong 'brush-setting' (causing scratches when the brush has been retracted)

My only concern is the sand spillages, if that happens straight after a cleaning or maintenance round the sand might get stuck into the applied product and show up as dirty patch, resulting possibly in a kind of abrasive effect.

For The Guardian we also added:

Our TripTrap (WoCa) cleaning soap contains both a gentle detergent AND a polish which cleans and feeds the wooden floor in one go. Always use a slightly damp cloth - don't use buckets of water!
Every 5 to 6 months a wooden floor should receive a maintenance service: applying a suitable for the finish (lacquer or oil) used maintenance product to keep wood and finish layer healthy.
For more information on regular maintenance and stain-removals you could redirect your readers to our information pages.

Hope this helps.

We received two emails in reply:

"That's fantastic advice, many thanks."
"Many thanks for you advice – excellent information."

At your service, as always.

Q: Should I sand down a cupped floor?

Wood works, always. It adjusts itself to the moist-content in your home: expands when there is an increase and shrinks when there is an decrease. That's the reason why we recommend to leave a sufficiently wide expansion gap around the whole perimeter of your wooden floor - it gives your floor 'room' to move - and it will, no matter which installation method you use.

Cupping of a floor happens when the floor absorbs so much moist it fills its expansion gap completely - or is 'stuck' in one spot due to very heavy furniture, faulty installation method - and has to go somewhere - up.
Excessive circumstances can happen to everyone: a leak, a flood etc, but those are temporary circumstances. 9 times out of 10 it's a case of 'removing' the cause and the cupped floor will settle again to its normal state.

However, we frequently get the question: "Should I sand down a cupped floor?"

The picture underneath explains what will happen then (click on the picture to see its full size).

It will 'look' fine temporarily, but as soon as the normal house climate is restored the floor will 'crown' - forever!

Best solution to resolve cupped floors: find the cause first e.g. leak, heavy downpour causing more moist than normal in the void beneath the wood floor, new appliance in the room or connecting area that causes more moist than normal - think of a tumble dryer, dish-washer etc - sudden and hefty increase in air humidity outside due to the seasons.
Some of the causes you can resolve, some you can't - or not easy or quickly. But if you don't know what causes the cupping then you can keep having the same problem over and over again.

To reduce the strain in your wood floor that is causing the cupping-effect: remove beading or skirting along one side of the room that runs parallel with the direction the floorboards are installed - wood hardly expands lengthways - and saw or chisel off a small strip of the last row. You'll be amazed how little you need to cut off this way for the floor to 'settle into place again - so start 'tiny', you can always redo the procedure.
A circular plunge-saw comes in very handy in these cases - quick and simple.

Floor sanding, tips and best tools

Discovering an original parquet floor underneath an old wall-to-wall carpet is a great and valuable discovery. Specially if the floor is still in one piece, i.e. no rows or tiles removed for installing a central heating system or other 'modern' plumbing work.

(See also our Wood Floor Guide: "7 Easy Steps to Repair/Restore Your Parquet Floor")

Restoring the parquet floor to its original lustre is really a 'labour of love', but with the right tools and products it will regain its beauty for many years to come. First up is to remove all carpet residue, like the sticky (rubber) underlayment. Scrapping will get most off. If you need to use chemicals try it out first in a corner behind a door - ventilate the room sufficiently and READ the instruction before hand!

Many old parquet floors were stuck down with bitumen which over time can become very brittle and loose its bonding power. Loose blocks (rattling underneath your feet when you walk over it) could be the result. Most old wood blocks have small T&G's all around, lifting one of the block could result in a kind of cascading effect, more loose blocks. So be careful when trying to remove loose blocks.
Before you re-install the lifted blocks remove as much of the bitumen from block and underfloor as possible. Any large residue of the bitumen will make the floor uneven, plus the time the modern adhesive will take to fully bond with block and underfloor will be longer - in cases we've seen even days longer!

Some re-found original parquet floors only need a bit of extra TLC, remove all dirt and apply a suitable maintenance product.
Others however take more work, specially when blocks had to re-installed (or 'new' blocks found to fill in empty spaces), the wear and tear layer is rather damaged (by carpet grippers etc). Then sanding the whole floor is the only solution (such a shame to cover your valuable parquet floor with carpet again!).

Before you go out and hire the first sander you can find, a word (two words really) of advice: remove what's left of the old finish material and hire the proper sanding equipment.
No matter with what grit you start sanding, if your old floor still has layers upon layers of wax on and in it you'll spend a fortune on sanding sheets! Try out a tiny corner of the floor with a sanding paper by hand. If the paper fills right up and spreads rubbish (warmed wax) all over the floor you'll first have to remove this old wear and tear layer. Apply Wax and Polish remover - turpentine or white spirit based - on a cloth and remove the old layers as best as possible. Again, VENTILATE & READ the instructions on the tin/bottle.

For the best end result after sanding your original parquet flooring you'll have to use (hire) a professional belt-sander (and edge-sander). Like the description says a belt-sander has a continuous (or endless) belt, or rather continuous (or endless) sanding paper - called Belt cloth. These belts are very easy to 'wrap' around the drum of the sander (1 minute tops), but most importantly will give the smoothest results on your floor.

Most DIY hire centres can only supply you with the (much lighter) drum-sander. Drum sanders have sheets of sanding paper, that has to be wrapped around the drum and fixed firmly in place with a metal bar. This metal bar, when not attached correctly will create shatter marks all over your floor. The problem is that those shatter marks will mostly only show up AFTER you applied the finish product (varnish or HardWaxOil). Trying to remove these marks with a rotary sander will create another problem: circular marks in your floor.

So for a 'professional' restored original parquet floor use/hire professional tools.

Did you install your wooden floor yourself and are you darn proud of it? Enter our DIY-Triumphs contest!

BEST BUY Maintenance product

As all of our clients know we always include a maintenance leaflet - filled with tips and advice to keep your natural wooden floor healthy and 'good-looking' - when we deliver the floor or when we have completed the professional installation of it.
Our showroom stocks maintenance products for any type of finish, be it oiled or varnished, of course of the highest quality.

One of our products: the Lecol/Leha Wax-Polish - StepStop OH36 - has been named BEST BUY in maintenance products for natural wooden flooring by the Dutch Consumer Union (the Dutch 'Which' organisation).
Our price: only £ 12.97 per tin (including VAT), which can cover 70 - 80 sq m!

The StepStop is a liquid polish, easy to apply and when regularly used - every 5 - 6 months - will feed the wood and protect your oiled floor against dirt and drips.
Regular maintenance always enhances your floor. If pressed for time, we can even do the maintenance for you (in the East-Kent area)

Name:
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Wooden Flooring Finish: oil or lacquer? Advantages and Disadvantages

One of the hardest questions to answer is: what makes a better finish, lacquer or oil/HardWaxOil?

First of all it’s down to personal taste and secondly to what is expected of the floor, e.g. easy maintenance, shiny look or natural appearance of the wood.

Historical the wax floor is still seen as very labour intensive to maintain, who doesn’t have memories of caretakers buffing away endlessly week after week after week (be it your “Gran” or the school caretaker). Then came the ‘modern’ lacquer (and synthetic and affordable wall-to-wall carpets) and the original wax floor almost became extinct.

For many decades most of the wooden flooring in the U.K. were pre-finished lacquered or lacquered/varnished on site. Maintenance became simple, buffing a thing of the past and there is a choice between high gloss and matte appearance. The newest innovation in lacquer even has the same appearance as an oiled floor to make the wood look more ‘natural’.

The biggest disadvantage of a lacquered finish on a wooden floor is that it ‘sits’ on the floor. When damaged with a sharp object or due to the long term abrasive effect of dirt (‘dirty’ shoes ‘sanding’ away in heavy traffic areas or under chairs, tables) the lacquer doesn’t protect the wood any more and dirt/moist will make the wooden floor look ‘grey’ regardless of maintenance efforts. In fact, cleaning damaged areas with a moist cloth will make things worse.
The only proper solution would be to sand the complete floor and to apply a new finish. Applying a proper lacquer layer is a job for the specialist, lacquer is not very forgiving to mistakes made.

The labour intensive maintenance of the old-fashioned wax-floor has now become a thing of the past: oils replaced the many layers of wax. The oil penetrates the wood deeper than lacquer and makes it moist resistance, but allowing the wood to ‘breathe’. A hardwax layer is applied afterwards to make the wear and tear layer water repellent.

Nowadays most oiled floors are pre-finished (or finished on site) with HardWaxOil, combining the natural oil (long term protection) and the carnauba or bees hardwax (wear and tear layer) in a two-in-one product. It’s very easy to apply and a very forgiving product when some mistakes are made, in fact an ideal DIY-finish (but we strongly recommend you read the instructions thoroughly and use the right equipment).

It has a great surface density and therefore very resistant to abrasive movements. Besides that, any (small) damages are very easily repaired with some wax or maintenance oil without the need to sand the whole floor.

The appearance of the finished wooden floor is matte satin with the advantage of making the floor look warmer, deeper in colour over the years.

An oiled-waxed or HardWaxOiled wooden floor requires slightly more maintenance than a lacquered floor, but not on the level of the old-fashioned knee and backbreaking wax floor, the modern maintenance products have taken care of that.

For advice on proper maintenance see our extensive tips and advice page.

Have we answered the question of what makes a better finish? No, sorry we still can't. Ultimately it is still down to personal taste, we're afraid.

p.s. our personal favourite finish is HardWaxOil (just so you know)

Gaps in floorboards: not to worry

It's that time of the year again: gaps appearing in floorboards

In this period our web site is being found by a lot by people "Googling" on: floorboard gap; floorboard gap filler; gaps in floorboards, etc.
We "wood like" to explain that in this time of the year and with this weather that gaps appearing in floorboards is pretty usual. We keep track of the air humidity in our house and shop on a daily basis and during the end of autumn and winter it can drop as low as 35 - 40%

Wood works all year round and when the weather (climate) gets dryer, wood will get dryer also (as will your skin). Then it is very normal for floorboards to shrink and for gaps to appear. These gaps will disappear again when the air humidity gets higher

It's no use to fill them; it's part of the way wood works.

What you could do (to keep the wood and also yourself healthy): attach ceramic water containers on radiators (check regularly that they are still filled with water; you can also add a few drop of a fragrant in for a nicer or fresher smell) or hang a damp tea-towel (not dripping wet!) on radiators; that will increase the humidity slightly.


For more on wooden flooring and house-climate see here

Salt

We are not sure if you are hoping for a mild winter or for a White Christmas. Which ever it will be, we are sure to have some cold-spells in the next three or even four months: Winter is on its way!

In our October newsletter we already mentioned that wooden floors benefit from extra TLC. 'Pampering' your floor by applying a maintenance product every 5 to 6 months will keep the wood protected against dirt and drips and enchance its beauty. Special care is recommended when salt from the gritting on icy and/or snowy roads comes on your floor through wet-shoe prints. Not all entrance mats 'wipe' the bottom of your shoes completely dry.
To prevent the salt effecting the wooden floor there are a few simple things you can do:

• Leave shoes on the mat (or kick off your shoes on the mat and store them in a shoe cupboard - if you have such a novel item - or area that is tiled. To prevent the tiles coming dirty or smutched, put an old newspaper on the floor first).
• Leave shoes in the porch and have slippers at the ready - warmed-up slippers is really a nice treat after a walk in the cold.
• Wipe wet-shoe prints dry the moment you notice them so the salt doesn't get a change to effect the wood.
• Make sure your wooden floor has received its extra TLC before the winter becomes wintry.

Q: water left standing on new oiled floor

Question:
Thank you for your website, it has been a great help.

We have new oiled oak floors. The workers who were fixing other parts of the house have created lasting water spots on the floor. They have now said they will have to sand the whole floors to treat those spots.

Is that accurate? Does that reduce the value of the new floor?

Answer:

Our answer depends on two - three issues:
how long the new floor has been down, how long the spillage has had time to cause 'damage' and if the water was polluted (like leaks from central heating radiators) and if any extra oil or maintenance products has been applied before the spillage happened.

It could be that the oil has protected the wood from definite staining and that the 'stain' sits on the oil/wax. Rub a small part of the stain with steel wool 0000 to see if this is the case. If so, rub the whole area down with steel wool and apply either the used oil or a suitable maintenance product.

If the water has stained the wood itself then light sanding (locally) is indeed needed. Be aware that water spillage can cause very deep and dark staining of Oak.

Because your floor has been oiled local sanding is possible. After sanding oil has to be applied again but compared with lacquer or varnish the 'new' area will not create a 'patchy' appearance.
Any reduction in value of the floor depends on how deep (if any) the stain has penetrated: how much has to be sanded off locally, reducing the thickness of the boards in that area.

Hope this helps.

Autumn = extra TLC for your floor (and home)

Autumn is here. This season means the start of the heating season for most of us: central heating systems are switched on again on most evenings and even in early mornings; wood-fires are lighted on one or two weekend evenings perhaps?

Besides keeping the cold outside the heating season also means keeping the humidity out. Radiators (including UFH) and wood-fires lower the level of air-humidity in your home and when not monitored and corrected could cause your natural wooden floor (and your skin!) to become dry (shrinking of the board, dehydrated and itchy skin). To keep both your wooden floor and yourself in good condition in this and next season we recommend you keep an eye on the air-humidity in your home in order for you to adjust/increase the humidity. And there are very simple ways to do this, from having plants in you home, hanging porcelain water containers on radiators and to ventilate your home daily.

The simplest way to check your home's humidity is to use a Maximum-Minimum Indoor Thermometer and Hygrometer.
Available from our showroom for just £ 17.50 (ex VAT, including battery, instructions of use and Wood You Like’s leaflet on House-climate).

All natural wooden flooring will benefit from a maintenance service before the real heating season starts: the wax or polish will hydrate the top wear layer of the wood (or the lacquer film) and like with applying a moisturiser to your own skin it will prevent dehydration of the wood. Especially when you have underfloor heating it is really recommended to apply a (extra) maintenance product this month.

FAQ Maintenance and Care

Not found the tip or advice you were looking for in this category?

Ask us here!

We will answer it to the best of our knowledge and as quick as possible.

If relevant your question will be turned into a new post.

Or check out our Wood Floor Guides:

"Do you know how to immediately increase the value of your house and comfort of your home?"

"7 Easy Steps to Repair/Restore your Parquet Floor"

"3 Easy STeps to Clean and Maintain your Parquet Floor"