How to Handle Water Damage to Your Hardwood
This is a terrifying moment…when you come home and there is water everywhere. Even worse, you have hardwood floors. You could be thinking that there is no way you can save your flooring but we have a couple of ways to help you handle any possible water damage you’ve experience on your hardwood floors.
First, and probably most importantly, you have to be able to notice if your flooring has been damaged by water. You can do so by feeling your floor and whether or not it is rising up at all. Just like when any other wood surface gets wet, it will expand and this will cause it to become a little bit taller among the other floor pieces. Another sign that your floors have been damaged by water is if there is a black border around the wood. Wood usually turns dark when it is keeping in moisture. This also could be caused by possible mold that grew due to water damage left over time.
There are a couple of ways to protect your hardwood floors from water damage. The first thing we always suggest is to take care of your wood before there is even a chance for it to get ruined. This, of course, means adding some preventative maintenance to your yearly floor routine. You can add a coat of protective covering from water. Why would you need to do this yearly? Well the coat on the hardwood floors that is initially there is there to protect the wood from ever being touched by water. By keeping up with this routine it ensures you that the wood will stay protected. Not only will it be protected and last you many more years, but will also give you peace of mind.
If you happen to have hardwoods that suffered a lot of damage over the year, you might be better off cutting out around the damaged area and grabbing some scrape hardwood that almost matches yours and installing that. After that you can sand, stain and seal again and have it looking brand new.