Stairs sanding in Ely

Do you need your wooden stairs restored? Give us a call on 01223 863 632.

Wood Sanding at the department of Chemistry

Being called in by Cambridge University is a real honour, it shows trust and belief in our abilities. As such, we took great care and pride in this job.

www.cambridge-news.co.uk

Master sander, Paul, led the way.

To say that this job was sizeable, might be an understatement. We'd been along a couple of months prior to sand the floor and they were just finishing with the building work. So it's fair to say there was a touch of feather dusting needed.

The parquet flooring ran the length of the rooms, spanned a full five aisles and sat on the second floor of the building.

As you might imagine, this was not a one day gig. In fact, we needed a full three days to get the floor to standard, but that is of little concern, as the end product is all that matters. For this job we enlisted the aide of Nathan, Greg and new boy, Ben. 

Day One: Cleaning. We find it best to give a wooden floor a very good wash. Especially after the grit and grime that's often left-over after the builders have been in. 

Day Two: The first coat of primer is laid.

Day Three: Lacquer.

Paul buffing.

Greg in action

Ben lacquering-up.

After the job is at an end, that's when you see the reward after days of hard, sweaty, back-breaking graft. 

Parquet flooring always reminds me of the old gym at my school, growing up. The shapes and texture distracted more times than I'd care to admit from the sport I was supposed to be playing, so, when we have a chance to sand, buff and lacquer a floor that will ultimately turn out like this, we jump at the opportunity.

Just think of all the scientific breakthroughs that will come in this beautifully floored room. Who knows, maybe one or two will come as a result of an unexpected spillage on said floor. 

Once in a while you might feel the urge to sand a floor yourself and we encourage you to try, it's a great sense of accomplishment when completed. To embark on such a job, you'll need all the lotions and potions available. We recommend Pallmann. Just visit our online shop and you'll find everything you need to make your floor glisten like the Cambridge Department of Chemistry. 

Alternatively, you can always call the professionals.

  

Art of Clean is a specialist cleaning firm in: 

Wood Floor Sanding,

Stone floor Cleaning,

Carpet Cleaning,

Rug Cleaning,

Upholstery Cleaning 

Leather Furniture Cleaning, 

Working for domestic or commercial clients throughout Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk and Hertfordshire.

For more information on our services contact our friendly team on 01223 863632 or email us at info@artofclean.co.uk

Wood sanding and oiling in Huntington

Wooden flooring in commercial businesses can be a real asset, however they do need to be looked after regularly to prevent them from needing to be sanded. Years of not using the correct cleaning products, and opting for products such as bleach can leave them in really bad condition.

Having to re-sand a wood floor can have a huge impact on your business, as it will normally take between 2-3 days to complete, depending on your chosen finish. If your flooring hasn’t been made from natural wood and instead is a quality engineered wood floor your only option might be to replace it if you do not maintain it properly.

The cost of sanding a floor properly is expensive if you want it done properly as it is very labour intensive. If you find someone who does it on the cheap, then the chances are you will need to have it re-sanded again in the near future, as they will not carry out the job of sanding and sealing it very well, and in the worse case scenario you might have to completely replace your floor. Make sure when you commission your wood floor to be cleaned that you use someone who has the relevant training and experience.

A 100m2 wood floor will cost approximately £2000 to have it cleaned and finished professionally, plus the loss of revenue for at least 2 days. However if you had maintained your floor it could have saved you this money and loss of business.

If you leave your floor for too long and you need to have it completely relayed it will be much more expensive, and it will take approximately 6 days to replace.

We recently completed a wood floor for an independent hotel in Huntingdon and used an oiled finish to seal their walnut floor (see picture) through the night, to save them money, so that it did not cause too much disruption to their business.

If you would like to find out more about how you can care for your wood floor or if you need it completely re-sanded and finished then why not give our professional wood flooring team a call today. Or visit our blog posts on how to care for your wood floor:


How to care for a lacquered or varnished wood floor

How to care for an oiled wood floor

Art of Clean is a specialist cleaning firm in: 

Wood Floor Sanding,

Stone floor Cleaning,

Carpet Cleaning,

Rug Cleaning,

Upholstery Cleaning 

Leather Furniture Cleaning, 

Working for domestic or commercial clients throughout Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk and Hertfordshire.

For more information on our services contact our friendly team on 01223 863632 or email us at info@artofclean.co.uk

Which one is the best finish on wooden floor? hard wax oil or lacquer?

This is quite a common question our customers ask us at Art of Clean, professional floor cleaners in Cambridge. This really depends on the type of finish you would like to achieve. At Art of Clean we would normally discuss these options with you on our initial inspection of your wooden floor.

Hard wax oils contain a mixture of oil and wax, which completely saturates into your timber flooring. Which means that no other liquid can be absorbed into your wooden floors, so if you were to spill any drinks, accidently tip up your bucket of cleaning water onto the surface then none of this would go into your lovely wooden floor.
The wax element of the hard wax oil, protects the surface from small scratches to the wood. Hard wax oil finishes are generally popular with our customer’s wooden floor cleaning requirements in and around Cambridge, as they are the easiest to maintain. The hard wax oil also comes in various shades and colours, and offers three different types of sheen finishes.

Lacquers on the other hand act in a slightly different way, rather than absorbing into the wooden surface of your floor, it will sit on the surface.
The type of lacquers we use at Art of Clean in Cambridge, have flexible qualities, so rather than drying into a solid rigid surface, the lacquer will flex with the timber when it is scratched or dented. This type of finish is harder to maintain, as although it is durable, if you need to touch up and scratches, it’s much harder. There are also only a two different types of finishes available too.

We realise at Art of Clean that it all comes down to a question of taste, and as hard wood flooring cleaning experts we will be happy to help you choose the most suitable finish for your hardwood floor, so why not give us a call on 01223 863632.

Wood floor restoration

We've had some great floor sanding and oiling/polishing jobs lately in Cambridge, Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk and beyond.

Take a look at the images below to see the amazing transformations our technicians have been working on lately……

Here are some images of a parquet floor restoration the team completed in Leicester.

Pre-sanding

Post-sanding

Post-oiling

And here is a lovely hard wood floor renovation in Cambridge we completed recently…

Pre-sanding

Post-sanding

Post-oiling

At Art of Clean we understand how a well finished floor can set off a whole room, giving your floorboards a new lease of life and increasing the lifespan of the timber.  Refinishing wood floors is one of our specialties, and we are trained and affiliated with the Ultimate Floor Sanding Company.  If you would like to talk to us about our services, please call our friendly team on 01223 863632 or visit www.artofclean.co.uk

Parquet floor filling in Cambridge

Although it’s not always necessary we sometimes have to fill the gaps between the boards before sanding, here is a recent floor where we had to fill the gaps between the boards, please pics before and after. The process is quite simple and it can really make a difference to a floor. If the floor has gaps of 2mm max we will be able to create mix of fine sand with resin (an alcohol based product is better than other solvents), and then we fill the gaps in the wooden floor, we would strongly recommend that we fill the gaps in the entire floor so that there are no parts which stand out afterwards as being different. However we can only fill the gaps if the floor is solid, i.e situated on a concrete floor, as if the floor is placed on a flexible surface it can cause movement and the filler will come out over time. But our specialised team will be able to offer advice on whether it is a viable option for your floor. If the gaps are more than 2mm we would need to fill the gaps with strips of pre-manufactured V shaped tips of wood, as if the gaps are too large these would come out over time.

The strips are then dipped in glue and then driven between the gaps. If the strips of wood then protrude above the level of the wooden floor we will then sand it flat, once it has dried the next day. Here are some pics of the before and after, the customer was really impressed with how the floor now looks as good as new.

Pine floor board sanding, filling and finishing in Cambridge

We completed work on a pine floor in Cambridgeshire. The floor had been recently sanded and sealed by another floor cleaning company. This floor had several unique challenges; the first one was the fact that client had already had this floor sanded 6 weeks before by another company. The company had sanded a really large room in only one day, and then on the second dasy only spent a few hours to seal the floor. The following day the customer walked on the floor to find that her socks stuck to the surface. The reason was because it was water based and resulted in the grain rapidly raising in the wood giving it a very rough surface.  They then failed to key the wood floor back.

The client also asked us for the floor to be a darker colour - We therefore advised the following:

For a more superior finish we filled the pine floor boards with strips of special pine slithers, then we carried out the sanding of the floor (see photo above). There were also some repairs we had to carry out to the floor boards. Some knots where filled with our special Knot Kit glue gun. The final filling process included filling the floor with a specialPallmann Allkit resin mixed with very fine wood dust from the floor. This helped to hide the imperfections in the floor like woodwork holes in some boards.

After this preparatory stage the wooden floor was ready for the application of a special DARK brown Pallmann magic oil (see photo below). The benefits of using a product such as Magic oil from Pallmann is that our client could use her floor much quicker.

The downside of using some oils for finishing your wood floor is that several coats need to be applied and many hours of drying is required. With Pallmann Magic oil we do not to wait that long before normal foot traffic can return.

The benefit of using a contractor that uses Pallmann Magic oil is:

You can use the floor much sooner - light foot traffic can commence within 4hours after the oil was applied (in ideal drying conditions)

Localised sanding can repairs can be carried out - unlike a lacquered floor - if it wears you do NOT need to re sand the while floor. A scratch can be sanded back on the spot the scratch appeared on the wood floor and just re-oiled. Above is a picture of the finished floor.

Beechwood floor sanding in Waterbeach, Cambridge UK

At Art of Clean, professional floor cleaners in Cambridge we were recently asked to sand a beechwood kitchen floor in Waterbeach, Cambridge.

The customer was delighted with the result as the wooden floor looked as good as new after we had sanded and hard wax oiled it, in a natural wax colour.The project took our team at Art of Clean a couple days to get back to its original state. The first stage was to use a high filtration vacuum which sucks up any dry soil which could cause damage to the floor whilst sanding, and then we sanded the main surface area of the kitchen with our large industrial sander, the great thing about our sanders is that there is hardly any dust created whilst cleaning the wooden floors, as 99.9% of the dust is sucked up into a large sack.

The next stage was to sand the corners and edges by hand, this is a fairly long, painstaking part of refurbishing a wooden floor, but it is also a necessity, as if any corners are not sanded properly there will be a colour difference at the end of the job.Once the floor had been properly sanded and prepared we then applied Pallmann Magic Oil, by hand, it comes in a choice of colours; Neutral, Cherry, Walnut, Silver Gray, White or black. One of the benefits of the hard wax oil is the fact that it dries in 2-4 hours (depending on the drying conditions), where as some other sealers take up to 8 hours to dry.

There are also no nasty chemicals or nasty smells, and if you accidently damage your wooden floor, then it is much easier to touch up, compared to other types of finishes such as lacquer.Beechwood floor sanding in Waterbeach, Cambridge