No matter how careful you are with your hardwood floors, eventually life will find a way to scratch them. In an instant, that beautiful surface can be marred from something as simple as moving furniture, knocking something off a table, or a rock stuck in the bottom of your shoe. Luckily, there are a number of surprisingly easy methods for removing or repairing even deep scratches from hardwood floors! Keep reading to find the one that will work for your scratches.
The first thing to do is decide how deeply the floor has been scratched. Minor scratches are ones that have only penetrated the floor's finish without damaging the underlying wood. Deep scratches have actually made a mark in the wood itself, but repairing them is still fairly straightforward. If you've managed to gouge a chunk out of the floor (damage that you could actually feel when walking over it), then you have a more serious job in store.
For minor scratches:
Often, these will disappear with a simple rub; just lick your finger and see if you can spit-shine the mark away. If that doesn't get the job done, run a fine steel wool pad along the length of the scratch (with the grain of the wood) to buff it out.
For deeper scratches:
The shockingly effective method for dealing with deeper scratches? Rub them with a walnut. Yes, you read that right! Take the flesh of a walnut and rub it along the scratch to fill in the damaged wood; almost as if by magic, the marks will disappear! Don't believe me? Check out the video below to see this technique in action!
To make this fix permanent, seal the walnut repair in with a small amount of urethane. You can also purchase a stain marker from a home improvement store to use on the bare scratch, but make sure you match the floor's color exactly!
For gouges:
Once you get to this level of damage, you might want to consider hiring a professional to refinish the floor completely; however, if you're handy or don't want to pay a pro, you can fill in even major gouges once you have the right supplies. You'll need wood putty, sandpaper, wood stain, and urethane. The video below will take you step-by-step through the entire process.
There you have it, now your floors should be looking (almost) as good as new!
