Restore Your Hardwood Floors Like a Pro Buff, Patch, and Polish
Hardwood flooring is one of the most popular options when designing or renovating a home. It’s incredibly durable, but that doesn’t mean it’s impervious to damage. Moving bulky furniture, wearing workboots or high heels, and letting your animals sprint through the house with long claws can leave your hardwood floors covered in scratches. Replacing it can
be expensive, so your next best option is to repair the damage yourself. Depending on the level of damage, you can use these tricks to help your hardwoods feel like new. Simple Touch-Ups After years of walking on your hardwood floors, you will notice a few scuffs and scratches. These are easy to take care of on your own. Using a soft cloth, apply a small dab of coconut oil to your floors and rub it in a small circular motion. After it sits for about five minutes, your floor will regain its shine. For minor scratches, you can use a touch-up pen or wax stick to fill in and cover any blemishes. Deeper Scratches Once the scratches and scuff marks become more pronounced, you’ll need to exert more effort. Start by using fine steel wool to buff out any
scratches. Just be sure you don’t push too hard! This will also remove the very top layer of wood, so you may need to apply some wood polish afterward to ensure your floor retains its shine. If that doesn’t work, you can also try wood putty. Start by cleaning the scratch before using a putty knife to place the wood putty into the gap. Let it dry, and sand it with fine-grit sandpaper until it’s level with the rest of your floor. You’ll then want to apply a shellac finish over the repaired area
to protect your floor further. The Point of No Return
If the years have really beaten up your floor, you’ll need to take more drastic measures. To unveil fresh wood, sand the area with fine-grit sandpaper or an orbital sander. Once again, don’t go too deep. After sanding, wipe the dust from the area before finishing it with a matching stain and seal.
CNS HELPS COUPLE REBUILD AFTER A CONTRACTOR’S SCAM RESTORING TRUST
One of the reasons our family founded CNS Cousins Construction was to offer homeowners an honest, trustworthy source of high-quality construction and home-improvement services. Working their way up in the industry, Calvin and Sam had seen so much unethical behavior by other companies that they were committed to charting a different course. We recently had a chance to help two victims of a dishonest contractor clean up the damage done and recover a small portion of their losses. The homeowners, a retired couple, had hired a contractor to build a new home. The contractor continually asked them for more money. He managed to frame the house but did shoddy work and, after taking $80,000 of the couple’s savings, he ghosted them.
“He was doing things he wasn’t supposed to do, and not doing things he was supposed to do, and he just disappeared on us and left the house a disaster,” the husband said in an interview on the Marty Griffin show, a popular feature on AM 1020 KDKA Radio. His wife added: “It turned into a very sad, expensive, tragic situation.” Unfortunately, this kind of dishonest behavior is all too common. Unethical contractors make empty promises and ask repeatedly for additional payments, without finishing the work they promised. We recommend that homeowners pay contractors up front no more than one-third of a project’s projected cost, and not a dollar more until the work is finished and they are completely satisfied.
Left with a bare, unprotected house frame, the couple found CNS Cousins online and contracted with us to add siding to the house. CNS “sat on the front porch with us and talked to us. We immediately felt a sense of trust,” the wife said. CNS partnered with James Hardie Siding, maker of high-quality fiber cement siding, to protect and beautify their couple’s home. While we had to make some adjustments on the fly to compensate for the previous contractor’s shoddy work, we were able to provide the couple a beautiful exterior for the price of vinyl siding. “To all of the consumers who have been burned like us, there are good, talented, trustworthy people out there,” Isabella said. “We’re never going to let this happen again.”
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