Hardwood Floor Cleaning in River Oaks, TX
In a house this close to the West Fork, a dark band low on the wall and a dark line across the floor usually date from the same afternoon.
River Oaks is a small city built largely in the 1940s for people working the defense plants, sitting on the inside of a bend of the West Fork of the Trinity. That location is why the town exists and it is also why the town has a flood history.
The 1949 flood is the one people still talk about, and there have been others since. A lot of the housing stock along the low streets has been through water at some point in its eighty years.
When we get called out here, a fair share of the questions are about marks that predate the current owner by decades.
How to Recognize an Old Flood Line
It is horizontal, it runs at a consistent height across a room without regard to what furniture is there, and on a wood floor it shows as a darkened zone with a fairly definite upper edge on the baseboards. Where the flooring itself took water and dried in place, you also tend to find cupping that never fully relaxed and occasional cracking along the grain. None of that follows traffic patterns, which is the giveaway that it is not wear.
The Chemistry of What You Are Looking At
River water carries iron and organic tannin, and oak carries tannin of its own. Iron and tannin together make a blue-black compound, which is why old water staining in oak is not brown. It is charcoal gray or nearly black, and it is not sitting on the wood. It formed inside it. That is the difference between this and almost everything else we take off a floor.
Being Straight About It
No cleaning process reaches an iron-tannate stain. Sanding, refinishing, and re-staining are all outside what this service does, so we are not the answer to it either. The honest options are living with it, a refinisher taking the boards down and treating them with an oxalic acid wash, or board replacement. We would sooner say that on the phone than take a booking and disappoint somebody in person.
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 River Oaks
An eighty-year-old floor with a bit of history in it is not a failed floor. Ring 214-838-7852 and somebody will look at yours and tell you which marks are removable and which ones are part of the house now. First visit is $50 off.
Areas we cover around River Oaks
Neighborhoods: River Oaks, Oakhurst, Riverside
Zip codes: 76114
Hardwood questions from River Oaks homeowners
So is there any point having a floor like this cleaned?
Often quite a lot of point. The staining is one part of the floor and film covers all of it. Take the film off and the sound wood comes back up, which usually makes the stained area read as a feature of an old house instead of as general decay.
Could the darkness just be dirt?
Worth checking, and it is a two-minute test. Damp a white cloth, work a small area, and look at the cloth. Soil transfers. An iron stain does not, because it is part of the board.
Our house is up the hill in Oakhurst. Same thing?
Usually not. The higher streets mostly have ordinary aging and ordinary film, and those floors clean up very well.
How long is the house out of use?
You are walking on it within the hour. Rugs stay rolled and heavy furniture stays put for a day.
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Schedule your River Oaks hardwood floor cleaning
Prefer to talk it through first? Call 214-838-7852. Otherwise, pick a time below.
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