Hardwood floor question?

[3_opihi]

Does anyone know the best way to remove buildup from a hardwood floor? Our floors are clean, but they look dull and you can see scuffs and such in the waxy buildup. I mopped today, and now they just look even more dull and feel sorta sticky.

Somebody told me I need to strip them by pouring boiling water on them? That sounds scary!!

Anyways, I always see these houses with these beautiful polished hardwood floors, all shiny and clean. Why can't I get mine to look like that???

[mags]

What type of HW flooring do you have? The pre-finished kind or the old house varnish or the polyurethane? What are you using to wash the floor with? My DH said that if its varnish, he doesn't think that using water on it is a good idea. We have the pre-finished HW flooring, and we just dry swiffer and then do use a slightly dampened cloth for, "wet" swiffering. There is no way we'd mop it with a bucket of water for the type of HW floor we have, since we have grooves in btwn the slats.

[crunchykids]

Our hardwood has poly over the top of it, our house was built in the 60's but the floors were redone by a previous owner. Which means that we can use a wood floor cleaner and a couple times a year we go to the hardware store and get a deep cleaner and finishing coat. But our floors are getting to the point where they need to be refinished, which means sanding and reapplying the poly.

It sounds like you may have wax over your wood, in which case you would need to strip the wax (this is what the boiling water is for, personally I'd do a google search and figure out your options) and then lay down a new layer. I vaguely remember my mother doing this before dad had their house carpeted.

[kimmie-pooh]

Our floors are not the pre-finished kind. The wood was laid and then finished. We were told not to use anything but water and vinegar on it otherwise it would develop a nasty film on it like you're describing. I've used only water and vinegar and my floors are still nice and shiny.

Once the film is there from other products, I don't know how to remove it.

[3_opihi]

I think that's the deal with ours Kimmie. I know it was laid about 15 years ago, but that's really all I know. We've lived here for three years. When we moved in there was a bunch of that orange oil wood floor cleaner in the cupboard, so that's what I've been using.

I have a friend who is a floor guy, so I'm going to have him come look at it. The boards are coming up next to the front door and need to be fixed anyway. It's super humid here, and this is a common problem.

[spiralmg]

We have old but nice parquet floors.No idea what used to be used on them, but when we moved in we started using Murphy's Oil Soap and water only. Then they started drying out and splintering. So I did some research...we ended up cleaning with the MOS, and then after they dried, using a wool dust mop with some Jojoba oil and a few drops of essential oil. This works brilliantly! The Jojoba is expensive but a little goes a long way (it is actually liquid wax usually used for skin care). We learned the hard way that you need to clean the dust mop every now and then or else you start to get dirty build up. When that happens, we just go back to MOS only for a week or so.