Why does Hardwood Dent? an informal chat with the floor man

Hardwood Flooring is a Natural product and Naturally dents when heavy object are dropped or if a large amount of pressure is put on it at once.  Stones, High heels, and heavy objects can cause large dents or gouges in hardwood floors, so what can we do about that?

You can hide dents or cover them up, Or ask some questions before purchasing the floor

WHAT TO LOOK FOR TO HIDE DENTS

1 Buy a natural hardwood floor, Unstained

2 3/4 Solid hardwood floors dont dent as easily

3 Hardness matters greatly but grain and charactre can hide what hardness lacks.

4 Distressed wood If you drop a hammer on a handscraped hardwood you wont be sorry

5 Brazilian Hardwoods are on average a lot harder and normally oiler so they dont loose their color and water doesnt ruin the wood as quick.

6 get something you like.  You wont be as upset if you love your floor as you will be if you already hate the floor.

How to cover a dent up

1 Filler sometimes works if you have a grainy floor or a small dent

2 stain rags can hide scratches and stain putty pens can cover up scrapes

3 Clean your floor, you can not lose your floor will be clean and there wont be a build up attracting attention towards your dent.

4 Rugs, these work great if you can put one there, if no rugs availabe try furniture.

What I did when I bought my hardwood floor?  The first floor I picked out the second one my wife did.  The first one was Macaranduba a very hard floor,  It would dent with my dogs would chew their butcher bones on the couch and drop them from a couple feet up but the dents were very minor.  The second floor was a #1 common Red oak Natural my wife picked out.  This floor dents easily however its natual the same color all the way through and the grain in the wood really hides the wear.   Remember darker floors show dings and dents easily when the light comes in lighter ones dont.  So thats my advice,  Comment please on your experience I love to hear your side of the story.

What is DustLess and is it actually Dust Less

When you sand and finish a hardwood floor you create dust.  This is a major head ache for the consumer who may be dusting thier home endlessly as a result of re doing their hardwood floors.  The floor covering industry has address this in a number of ways trying to "contain the dust"  There is no such thing as DUST LESS sand and finishing.  The most common way is with vacuum bags on the sanders that suck most of the dust out of the air and put them in the bag just like a vacuum cleaner would.  However this doesnt get ALL of the dust just MOST of the dust.  The other way is to put a trailer outside the home the runs a pretty cool reverse air suction system that attaches to the sanders and sucks the saw dust out of the home.  There are grades of suction systems and some are better than others, its all about how many particles you can move and the more you can move the more expensive and noisy the system.  I am posting this in as always a response that I have gotten from consumers asking what is the difference in "Dustless" vs non Dustless.  I have a joke that if it was really Dustless my guys would run their equipment gurgling thier lips like motormouth in "Police Academy" and the process would take all but a couple moments and be almost free.  Please do post let me know what you think about Dustless sanders because we always love to hear from the consumers how products and systems perform.

Ways to avoid the dust are; Buy prefinished hardwood floors, Pay a little extra for a trailer dust containment system, or put up a lot of visquene to try and trap the dust in the area then wipe down the ways for dust.  There is always going to be dust involved but you are still way better off with hardwood than carpet if you have allergies if you ask me.