Hardwood Floor Cleaning in Elgin, SC
January is the month we get the most calls about a dark ring in the middle of a living room, and it is almost always the same cause.
A cut tree drinks a gallon of water in the first days and the reservoir on most stands holds about that. Between topping it up in the dark with a jug and the needles wicking water over the lip, a certain amount ends up on the floor, and it stays under a heavy stand where no air reaches it for five or six weeks.
That is a long time for moisture to sit against a finish. When the tree comes out, there is a ring, and sometimes the boards under it have visibly moved.
The Difference Between a White Mark and a Black One
White or milky means water got into the finish but not past it. That one is often recoverable, and it sometimes fades on its own over the following weeks as the trapped moisture works its way out. Black or gray-brown means water reached the wood and reacted with the tannins in it. That is a stain inside the board, and no surface work reaches it. A refinisher can bleach it and even then the patch rarely matches.
Boards That Have Cupped
If the floor under the stand feels slightly domed or the board edges have raised, the wood took on water and swelled. Some of that relaxes over a few months as the board dries back to the room. Whatever is still there in the spring is permanent, and levelling it means sanding, which is not what we do.
Next December
A plastic tray under the stand that is bigger than the stand, and a piece of hardboard or a rug pad on top of that. Fill with a funnel and a small container instead of a jug. And get the tree out early, since most of the damage happens in the last two weeks when everybody has stopped watering it and the needles are dropping into a puddle.
Not sure whether your floor needs cleaning or refinishing? There are three tests you can run yourself in about a minute, and they will tell you which one you are dealing with before anyone quotes you.
Hardwood problems we handle in Elgin
Get somebody out on 803-393-7625, or set it up online whenever suits. $50 off the first job.
Areas we cover around Elgin
Neighborhoods: Elgin community, Lugoff adjacent, Blaney area
Zip codes: 29045
Hardwood questions from Elgin homeowners
The ring is white. Should I try the hair dryer trick I read about?
Gentle warmth sometimes helps a shallow blush, and it also sometimes softens the finish enough to make things worse. If you try it, keep it moving, keep it low, and stop the moment the surface looks at all different.
Can you get rid of it?
We can improve a cloudy mark and we can make the whole floor around it look considerably better, which reduces how much your eye goes to it. A black stain in the wood is staying, and we will say so on the walk-through.
Is January a bad time to have floors done?
It is one of the better times. The house is at a stable low humidity, the coat cures cleanly, and the floor has just taken the worst traffic of the year with a month of visitors on it.
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