Hardwood Floor Cleaning in Leipers Fork, TN
A lot of the best floors around Leiper's Fork are reclaimed wood under an oil finish, and an oil finish is maintained by an entirely different method than a sealed one.
The restoration work that has gone on out here for the past twenty years produced a particular kind of floor. Reclaimed heart pine and salvaged oak, wide boards, saw marks and nail holes left in on purpose, and very often a hardwax oil or penetrating oil finish instead of a film-forming one. It is beautiful work and it is specified precisely because it does not look like a modern floor.
It also does not behave like one. A polyurethane or factory-cured finish forms a continuous layer that sits on top of the wood, and everything we do is designed around cleaning that layer and adding a sacrificial coat over it. An oil finish soaks into the wood and cures inside it. There is no film to clean and nothing for a maintenance coat to bond to.
So the honest starting position on a Leiper's Fork floor is a question, and the quote comes after it. If it is oil, we are not the right people and we will point you at who is. If it is sealed, which a good number of the reclaimed floors out here are, then it is straightforward work and the results on old wood are worth seeing.
Telling an Oil Finish From a Sealed One
Put a drop of water in an out-of-the-way spot and leave it five minutes. On a sealed floor it beads and sits there and wipes off leaving nothing. On an oil-finished floor it darkens the wood underneath within a couple of minutes and the dark spot fades slowly as it dries out. The other tell is feel. A sealed floor feels like a coating, slightly slick and uniform. An oil-finished floor feels like wood, with the grain texture reading through under your palm.
Why Oil Floors Need a Different Trade
Oil finishes are maintained by cleaning with a specific soap and then re-oiling the areas that have gone dry, usually every year or two in traffic areas. It is a good system and it has the enormous advantage that wear can be repaired in place, one section at a time, without touching the rest of the room. What it cannot tolerate is a general-purpose cleaner or a film-forming coat put over the top, either of which will look wrong immediately and be difficult to reverse. That is a real risk on these floors and it is the reason we ask before we work.
Reclaimed Wood Under a Sealed Finish
The other half of the reclaimed floors out here were sealed with a modern finish, often to make them practical for a house with a family in it. Those we handle, and they are some of the more rewarding jobs we do. Heart pine is soft and it holds a great deal of character in the surface texture, saw kerf, and old nail holes, and every one of those features is a place where soil and product residue collect. Getting that out brings back a depth of color in old pine that people forget it had.
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 Leipers Fork
A hundred and fifty year old heart pine floor is not something anyone can go and order again, and there is no hurry that justifies getting it wrong. If we are unsure what is on yours, we will say we are unsure.
Call 629-654-7113 or book through the site; the first appointment is $50 off.
Areas we cover around Leipers Fork
Zip codes: 37064
Hardwood questions from Leipers Fork homeowners
Our floors are reclaimed barn wood. Is that a problem?
The wood is not the question, the finish on it is. Reclaimed boards under a modern sealed finish are treated exactly like any other sealed floor. Reclaimed boards under oil need an oil specialist. The water-drop test at the top of this page will tell you which you have in about five minutes.
The floor has gouges and old nail holes in it that were left deliberately.
Then we leave them alone, which is the correct answer for a floor of this kind. Character marks that were part of the specification are not defects and nobody should be trying to make them go away. What we clean out of them is the soil that has collected in them since, and that is generally what has made the floor look tired.
How careful do you have to be with soft old pine?
Careful. Heart pine dents where oak would scratch, and it takes a lighter touch and a gentler pad. We work these floors more slowly and we would rather do a second pass than lean on the first one.
How often does a floor like this need attention?
Sealed reclaimed floors sit in the normal range of twelve to eighteen months, sometimes longer in a house without much traffic. Oil floors are on a different schedule set by whoever maintains them, and that is a question for them.
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