Maintenance – yes, it is still required

Well here I am typing about flooring maintenance. Not the most sexy topic obviously, but it is so critical to overall satisfaction with flooring of ANY kind.

Modern floors are tough and there are some aspects of certain floors that really add extra dimensions of durability, but I don’t care where you’re from or what is in your house – YOUR FLOOR REQUIRES maintenance.

For carpet a very good vacuum along with proper steam cleaning (every 12-18 months) is essential to the long term lifespan of your carpeting.

For vinyl & tile there are some very good products from Armstrong called Armstrong Once-N-Done along with some other things in the same cleaning system that do a great job.

For wood floors, cork flooring, bamboo floors and laminate flooring it is important that you use something that will not over wet the floor yet will still sanitize it. Sweeping is also very critical since it is the dust and grit that gets under your shoes that acts just like sandpaper. That kind of grit under even tennis shoes can tear right through a finish or put scratches on the toughest floor made. (including concrete and porcelain tiles). So keeping the floor swept and making sure that how you sweep or vacuum the floor is not adding to the problem.

I recommend the BONA cleaning systems for any hard surface flooring. It is compatible with mainstream hardwood finishes and will not leave a nasty build up. They also sell a SUPER soft microfiber sweeper that is very good indeed.

Maintenance. Not the funniest thing in the world, but one of the most important things you can do to make sure your floor stays in tip top shape.

One final note: no flooring is bullet proof. If it was you would see police wearing a suit of flooring armor instead of body armor. (this tip courtesy of Ryan who has a way of illustrating the point!)