Hardwood, Not Hard Work
Take a Shine to Your Floor Without Getting on Hands and Knees

By Stephanie Cavanaugh
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, July 28, 2007

Maudline Cajou is at the helm of an alarmingly loud, ancient, dusty-pink Hoover buffer, pushing, pulling, carefully skirting the edges of the Oriental rug on the living room floor in Margot Kelly's Capitol Hill house.

For 14 years, the routine has never varied: One week Kelly's house cleaner waxes the 200-year-old floors and then buffs; the next week she only buffs.

"I love to wax," Cajou said. "I sweep it off first, then wash it with a tiny bit of dish soap and water and rinse very lightly. Then I lightly apply Johnson's paste wax on my hands and knees, the old-fashioned way -- let it dry for about an hour, then shine with the polisher. I like it to look nice when it's done."

Surely there's an easier way to put a shine on an old wood floor.

Most modern hardwood floors are covered with polyurethane, a plastic coating that needs no buffing. Applying it to older floors sounds as if it would make maintenance effortless, but polyurethane isn't necessarily the answer. It might even be a big mistake, particularly if your floors date back 50 years or more.

"If there's any contaminant on the floor -- Murphy's Oil Soap, paste wax, Endust, anything with silicon in it -- nine times out of 10, polyurethane won't bond," said Sprigg Lynn of Universal Floors in Northwest Washington. "It will end up scratching easily or peeling off."

You can bet that an old floor was kept waxed and that the wax is so ingrained in the wood that even sanding won't remove it completely. And though you didn't intentionally spray the floors while dusting, chances are that when you cleaned the dining room table, the spray drifted onto the floorboards.

"Polyurethane is the ultimate instant gratification. It's junk food for floors," said Judith Capen, a District architect and specialist in preservation. "Unless we have cleaning people, how likely are we to wax them? Easier to call the flooring guy to sand the heck out of the floor and slop on a coat of polyurethane. The day they walk away, it's fantastic . . . but five years later?"

When she tried polyurethane on the kitchen's wood floor in her turn-of-the-century home, "it wore fast, and it wore extremely erratically, patchily, in the high-traffic areas," she said. "We all know that polyurethane will wear through, but this was insane."

Even when there is no waxy residue on floors, polyurethane is not indestructible. "It's popular because it's easy to maintain; it can be damp-mopped," Lynn said. "But anything can scratch -- stilettos, dog's nails, they're like little knives on their feet, actually denting the wood."

And when it wears, it may need to be sanded off, shortening the floor's life. Despite the thickness of the floorboards, there's a mere quarter-inch of wood between beautiful and shot.

Lynn, who has been sanding floors for his family's 50-year-old company since "before I was paid for it," said the number of sandings a floor can withstand ranges from "five to 15, depending on who's behind the sander."

He said, "There are some historic floors we don't put a sander on; we literally hand-scrape." Universal has refurbished official rooms and private quarters at the White House for every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

"There are some so old, from the 1700s, that they have boards that are higher and lower, and a sanding machine will grind anything flat -- it'll grind concrete. But it will take life and character out of the floor."

Ah, character. Beware the weekend project and the rental sander.

Caroline Millet was one of the gentrification pioneers in Logan Circle, buying, restoring and selling nearly 100 "ancient wrecks" in the 1970s and 1980s.

"In 1973, I foolishly sanded down my floors in my 1870 house, stained them dark and polyurethaned them," she said. "They looked fine, but they did not look old; they lost their character."

Millett teaches design and lives in Philadelphia, where the softly lustrous pine floors of her 4,000-square-foot, circa 1855 home have benefited from her years of experimentation, though she cautions that her low-maintenance technique is for dark wood only.

After a very light cleaning, she rubs on stain, "any old stain," she said. "You can do it yourself with a rag -- I like old towels myself."

That's it. Maintenance consists of mopping with Murphy's Oil Soap, using Old English Scratch Cover for the occasional heavy gouge and reapplying stain when high-traffic areas show wear.

Like an antique piece of furniture, her floors have "holes, nicks, scratches, all manner of imperfections," she said. "That's often good. There's a patina and richness and character that you cannot get in new. I don't want virgin baby floors. I love the character."

The bottom line, she said: "People frequently say, what beautiful floors."

Think your floors are hardly historic, just junky old pine? They may be more valuable than you think. "In the late 1800s, southern heart pine was the least expensive floor you could buy. It was inexpensive and plentiful," Lynn said. "Now, antique heart pine is the most expensive -- it takes 60 years to get to the size of a broom handle."

Floors that have a reddish cast are among the oldest. "It doesn't turn red until 250 years -- some woods can be 800 years old," Lynn said.

As an alternative to polyurethane, Lynn likes a tung oil finish. "Tung oil has been around since the 1400s and will give the look of a waxed floor," he said. "It has a patina to it without the plastic." Clean with products designed for oiled floors, and re-coat with tung oil if the surface loses its sheen.

Capen frequently suggests a polymerized tung oil finish from Sutherland Welles. "They boil it, I think, and it becomes magic," she said. "You put it on, immediately go over it with a buffer, and in 12 hours, it's dry. It makes a beautiful finish -- the hot-shot people in the Hamptons are using it."

A higher gloss is trickier to find.

Although Cajou's waxing routine is effective -- Kelly's floors shine like satin -- doing it every two weeks is excessive.

Waxing need not be such an onerous task, Lynn said. When properly applied, wax can "bring a floor back to life . . . for a lot less money than sanding and refinishing a floor. And it will outlast any finish." Also, a well-waxed floor is not slippery in the least, despite what some people think.

Lynn suggests a thorough cleaning with a solvent such as Varsol, mineral spirits or paint thinner and No. 2 steel wool, followed by a light application of wax. "Some people over-wax, and you can write your name with your toe. I've taken wax away from people," said Lynn, whose showroom floor has a waxed finish.

Tinted carnauba wax, which Universal sells, hides a multitude of sins. So does shoe polish. "We've used it for years to touch up a floor. We've even done large areas," Lynn said. "It will put a shine on a floor that you wouldn't believe -- if you want to achieve that."

When the wax is down, buff. "You don't have to rent a buffer; polish it out with a small auto buffer," he said.

Upkeep consists of sweeping, buffing, and an occasional light smear of wax in high-traffic areas -- not under the dining table where few ever step. If there are scratches, he recommends Zenith Tibet Stick, which wipes them out, he said, "quick as a wink."

Even many damaged floors that appear beyond repair can be patched and polished to a fine antique appearance, Lynn said. Universal has a trove of salvaged, re-milled boards. Bring him a board, and he'll find its match.

He said the company is currently repairing 1930s floors in the Supreme Court using wood from a 1930s house.

Ed Copenhaver, co-owner of Frager's Hardware on Capitol Hill, recalled: "When I was growing up, twice a year you waxed with Johnson paste wax. In spring, you'd put down the summer rugs; in fall, you'd put down the winter rugs."

Lined up on the shelves at Frager's are traditional paste waxes, including cans of Johnson and bowling alley wax, and several tinted varieties such as Butcher's Boston Polish, which leaves an amber cast, and Trewax Indian Sand, which has a slight yellow tint.

Sent in search of a quicker fix, Copenhaver trots down the long aisle and picks up a bottle of Johnson One Step No Buff Wax, scanning the directions. "It has its own solvent and claims to do it all," he said, adding with a shake of his head, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

The product directs you to wash the floor with it and then reapply, letting the second coat dry to a shine. Cleaning with Varsol or a similar solvent would be cheaper, Copenhaver suspects, because the wax costs about $9 for 22 ounces. Calls to Johnson were not returned.

Despite the breezy directions, no-buff wood floor finishes require thorough, messy, back-aching preparation. Skimp on that first cleaning, and floors will often dry to a dull, sometimes streaky, haze.

Copenhaver cautions against taking a shortcut and mopping on an acrylic polish, such as Future. While acrylics do give a brilliant shine on wood floors -- with ease -- they require a water-based solvent to remove, which raises the wood's grain. But, he added, "it's done all the time -- as long as you don't need to take it off, it probably makes no difference." Just mop on more when the floor gets dull.

As with Future, the makers of On An' On, an acrylic no-buff finish made for vinyl, terrazzo and polished ceramic floors, caution against use on wood floors. That people use it anyway comes as no surprise to Becky Kaufold, a formulating chemist for the manufacturer, Spartan Chemical.

"It's a workhorse product with great gloss and great durability. It's been used on wood floors, and they swear by it, but it's generally not something we recommend," she said.

Among other things, water-based acrylic products act like an adhesive; they don't allow for wood's natural expansion and contraction, or the absorption and release of humidity.

"They glue the boards together," Kaufold said. "They start moving as a panel, a unity. When you walk on a floor and see half-inch gaps and then five or six boards glued together and then another gap, they're moving away."

Despite the cautions, On An' On, which is available through janitorial suppliers for about $70 a gallon, mops on easily and dries to a beautiful shine in about 20 minutes.

Customers "love it no matter what I say," Kaufold said. "We have to be very careful. When there's a problem, people go to the biggest pockets to pay."

"That's the kind of product we love," said Capen, who used to use Mop 'N Glo on her wood floors to fine effect -- "where you can ignore the instructions and get nice results."