Over the years we have received calls from time to time from people who have bought a product for their floor that they assumed would make it look better.  Most times the product claims to “clean and protect” or “clean and shine”, but actually all it does is cause the floor to look worse than before.  When these folks call us, they are usually desperate.  We don’t have to talk them into using our services, like when we tell them cleaning is good for their home environment, or cleaning will help your floor last longer, no these folks are desperate!  They say, “Please come as soon as possible, I think I ruined the floor!”

This story is about one of those customers. I’ll call her Mary.  I could use her real name, Jeanette, but I want to protect her privacy and also adhere to our HIPPA policy here at The Rug Beater.  Jeanette, I mean Mary, purchased a new engineered wood floor about 3 years ago for her kitchen.  She thought it was nice but wanted to improve the shine.  She began looking for products and found Bona and Mop and Glo, among others.  Now Mop and Glo has been around for a long time.  They should have a disclaimer on their product that says, overuse of this product will eventually ruin your floor and require hundreds of dollars to repair but it will make your floors shine!  I asked them to put this disclaimer on their label, but I haven’t heard back from them. 

Mary’s floor was looking bad and she knew it.  She thought it would need replaced. I tested an area with our method and it responded well so we scheduled a time to come back and do the entire floor.  Once complete she was happy and promised never to use these types of products again.  In fact, she poured the Mop and Glo down the drain, but only after I told her it wouldn’t work in her laundry either. 

Mary had many friends who gave her well meaning advice.  Like use vinegar and water, ammonia, or many other household cleaning agents.  They must really not like her very much.  When it comes to wood floors, we have found using a cleaner made for wood floors is the best.  Recently, Shaw Industries, manufacturers of 75% of the flooring in America, developed a floor cleaner for hard surface flooring and we stock it and sell it at our office.  With the popularity of hard floors, it only makes sense to use the right solution to clean them. Call us if you have questions about cleaning your floors before you make the mistake of using a product which is only adding floor finish instead of truly cleaning the floor.  By the way, the internet and big box stores are not the place to purchase these products.