So Your Wood Floor Has a Scratch
It is inevitable. That brand new wood floor you installed will get a scratch or two. Most of them you can shrug off as “character,” but what do you do about the ones that are deep and perhaps unsightly?
Right in front of our television in our family room we have a deep 4 inch scratch. Making it even worse is the fact the the light from the windows shines right on it, like a beacon, making it obvious from anywhere in the room.
If the scratch was only on the polyurethane layer, the scratch could be touched up by applying matching polyurethane to the area with an artist’s brush. Before you do this, however, you will need to “rough up” the area so that the polyurethane will have something to adhere to. Mark off the area that you will working on with some painters tape. You don’t want to accidentally rough up more of the floor than you need to. Using a fine gauge steel wool, lightly sand the scratch. Lightly being the key word.
You will then apply polyurethane to the scratch with your small artist’s brush. Then with a cloth slightly dampened with mineral spirits, the excess should be wiped off and blended before it fully dries.
If the stain has also been scratched, you will need to touch that up before your apply a new finish. Many floor manufacturers sell repair kits that you can order which will match the stain exactly. I know my kitchen and laundryroom cabinets came with such a kit. One which has sadly already been put to use. If this is not an option for you, you will have to try and match the stain yourself.
The easiest way to do this is to buy a furniture stain marker. Color in your scratch and then quickly wipe the excess away. Let it dry and repeat as many times as necessary to achieve a match. Remember, it is better to do this slowly with many light coats, than to put a heavy layer on that is too dark and makes the scratch even more unsightly.
Once you have matched the color, follow up with the polyurethane.
Should this not blend well enough, you may have to refinish an entire strip of wood. Depending on your level of expertise this might be something better off left to a professional.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Thankyou for the tip! We are in the process of finishing our house to sell. With 5 young children our floors are quite sad. For us it wsa several small scratches that we thought, ‘It’s ok, it adds a litle character’ before we knew there were more scratches then smooth floor.
The smaller ones have come up nice but the deep scratch will need more attention.