The Trick That Will Save Your Wood Floors (and Furniture)

420 Shares

Miss O plays this game where she goes into the foyer, then runs as fast as she can into the living and catapults herself into my recliner. It’s super cute, and it gets some last burst of energy out at night, but it was also wearing a bald spot on the floor.

I had gotten some of those stick on felt pads months ago with every intention of putting them on… you know the rest.

The definition of irony: When you pull out your chair so you can put felt pads on the bottom, and end up putting a big scratch on the floor.

Grrrr.

Where does a woman turn when she puts a giant scratch in her floor? Pinterest, of course!

I found a pin that mentioned a fix for scratched wood. I had to follow several links to trace it back to the original post. What I found was post after post claiming this to be some sort of miracle fix.

Well, I’m a skeptic. But I had also just scratched up my floor, so I gave it a go.

Here’s what my floor looked like before:

Yeah, it was bad.

I mixed up some magic potion, and rubbed it on.

The mixture is really simple. 1 part vinegar and 3 parts olive oil. I used an old burp cloth to apply – just dip it in the mixture and rub on to the floor. It will be a bit greasy at first, but the oil will soak in to the wood. If you’re in a hurry you can use a dry part of the cloth rub it in and take up the excess, but you’ll want to reapply sooner.

Here’s what it looked like after:

Seriously, how crazy is that?! I didn’t move the oil and vinegar mixture, the spot is just gone.

I was completely blown away. My floor looks fantastic!

I decided to do another spot.

It doesn’t work as well on old worn spots. You can see at the top of the picture there’s a darker spot, damage from before we bought the house. It looks a bit better after the treatment, but the result isn’t nearly as dramatic.

The last place I tried the mixture was underneath the end table next to my recliner. I store my laptop under there and the lap table I used had been slowly scratching the floor over the last several years.