How to Repair a Scratched Hardwood Floor

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It's inevitable no matter how well you preserve your hardwood floor, it will sometimes suffer scratches and scuffs. Do not despair! Whether the damage is small or large, there are solutions to ensure your hardwood floor gets back to its natural beauty scratch free!

Repairing Surface Scratches

The easiest type of scratch to repair is a scratch within the finish of the floor, and not the hardwood itself. Depending on the method you used to finish your floors, the scratch may actually be in the polyurethane or wax level. If that's the case, you can use a piece of steel wool to gently remove the finish on just the spot where the scratch appears. After the scratch has been buffed out of the finish, simply touch up the finish using either the same polyurethane compound or wax product originally used.

Repairing Superficial Scratches

Many scratches in hardwood floors are superficial they lay just at the surface and are not deeply imbedded. For these types of scratches, you have several options for repair. If your hardwood floor is actually just a wood laminate, many manufacturers sell touch-up pen that can repair minor problems by ?coloring? in the affected area with a shade designed to match the grain of the wood. Even if your flooring isn't laminate, hardware stores carry wax-like touch-up sticks that serve two purposes: normalizing the color to take away the appearance of a scratch while leaving behind a thicker waxy residue to fill in the area formerly scratched. Sometimes, this just may not do the trick, however, and another option designed to conceal scratches is a stain-based touch-up pen that colors in the scratch in your hardwood floor similar to the way its counterpart fixes scratches to laminate.

Repairing Serious Scratches

For more serious scratches that can't be touched up or concealed with new finish, pens or crayons, replacing the entire board affected may be the solution. Because of the way in which hardwood flooring is laid, removing the affected board may not be as simple as levering and pulling. Many hardwood floors, especially those more than a few decades old, feature boards carefully pieced together without many discernable joints. In that case, carefully trace the outline of the scratched board, and with a circular saw, cut a line diagonally across. Your board, now weakened, will remove more easily. Cut a replacement to fill the gap, secure with screws or nails, and stain or finish the board to match. Problem solved!

Accidents, scuffs, and scrapes happen, but with a little time and patience, as well as the proper tools and method, these blemishes can be easily solved. Whether major or minor, don't let scratches mar the natural beauty of your hardwood floor!