Hardwood Floor Cleaning in Mabank, TX
Running the same wood out onto a screened porch looks wonderful and puts an interior floor into an exterior climate.
It is a popular detail in the lake houses around here, and it is easy to see why. A continuous floor from the living room through the doors and out onto the porch makes the two spaces read as one and the porch feel like part of the house.
A screened porch is not part of the house as far as the wood is concerned. It has no conditioned air, no humidity control, and no barrier against anything except insects. In July the relative humidity out there tracks the outdoors, and in January it does the same thing in the other direction.
Interior flooring is manufactured and finished on the assumption that it will live between roughly thirty and fifty percent relative humidity. Out on the porch it sees twenty to ninety.
What the Swing Does
The boards expand and contract far more than the same floor does indoors, so gaps open and close dramatically with the season. Over years the fasteners work loose, the finish develops fine cracking as it flexes with the wood, and end joints start to lift. The floor inside the doors, ten feet away, does none of this, which makes the comparison unusually stark.
The Ultraviolet Half
A screen stops insects and does very little about light. Porch flooring takes far more ultraviolet exposure than any interior floor, so the color shifts faster and the finish itself degrades, going chalky and losing its ability to shed water. That is why porch boards often feel slightly rough to a bare foot when the interior floor of the same age is still smooth.
What We Can Do and What We Will Say
We will clean it and put a protective coat on it, and out there the coat is doing more work than it does anywhere in the house, because it is the only thing standing between a degraded finish and the weather. Expect to want it done more often on the porch than inside. What we cannot do is stop the movement, close the gaps, reverse the ultraviolet damage, or repair a finish that has started to crack. We do not sand, refinish, or re-stain.
If You Are Building One
Worth saying for anybody planning it. There are exterior-rated wood and composite products made for exactly this application, and they cost less trouble over ten years than running an interior floor outside. If the visual continuity matters, a good supplier can usually get close on color with a product that is designed to live out there.
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 Mabank
Treat the porch as its own floor on its own schedule and it will last a great deal longer than if you treat it as an extension of the living room. Call 469-864-8063 and we will price the two separately. $50 off to begin with.
Areas we cover around Mabank
Neighborhoods: Cedar Creek Country Club, Enchanted Oaks, Lighthouse Landing, Cedar Creek Landing, Long Cove, Pinnacle Golf Club, Historic Downtown Mabank
Zip codes: 75147
Hardwood questions from Mabank homeowners
How often should the porch be done?
Annually is realistic where an interior floor goes eighteen months, and more often if the porch takes weather from a particular direction. The coat is a consumable and it is being consumed faster out there.
The gaps out there are much bigger than inside. Is that a fault?
Not a fault, a consequence. An unconditioned space produces much larger seasonal movement, and an interior product laid in one will show it. What is worth watching is whether boards are staying separated year-round or whether ends are lifting, which means fasteners have let go.
Which areas does the crew cover?
Mabank including Cedar Creek Country Club, Enchanted Oaks, Lighthouse Landing, Cedar Creek Landing, Long Cove, Pinnacle Golf Club, and historic downtown Mabank, plus Kemp, Kaufman, Scurry, Talty, Terrell, and Crandall.
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Schedule your Mabank hardwood floor cleaning
Prefer to talk it through first? Call 469-864-8063. Otherwise, pick a time below.
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