Black Walnut Wood from a Hurricane

If we were ever at a loss on things to say about wood flooring, here is the be all and end all. 

In March of 2015, this image made it around the world and virally infected our inspirations. Facebook shares topped 20,000 within a month and until now the photograph has been viewed almost 2 million times. Heck, I keep clicking because I almost can't believe it. 

hardwoodfloorsmag.com

The story behind the wood is a testament to recycling and natural wonders. The black walnut wood was the result of a hurricane's force (2011), uprooting the Goliath and depositing it for the Real Antique Wood Company of Irvington, New Jersey to make something spectacular.

The resulting project went on to win the Wood Floor of the Year Award this year and there's little surprise there.

I simply can't keep my eyes from the black trails that guide you all the way around the house.

We're not in the installation business...yet, but if we were, this would certainly be the kind of job we would look to do. Those rich, deep colours, the knots and swirls; they make wood floor sanding a really worthwhile career.

Now, while we haven't had the pleasure of sanding hurricane felled forestry, we have had the joy of sanding the floors at a British National Institution - Norwich cathedral.

 

For the best looking wooden floors, this side of the Atlantic, call Art of Clean and we'll make you happy you did.

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

Unconventional Flooring

When you find yourself in the enviable position of choosing a new floor for your home, variety can be both a joy and a devilment. Just type in 'home flooring' into google and look at the choices available to you. Some people take the traditional route, wood or stone flooring, which lend that air of rustic and or classic style. But others go the odd route.

This particular floor is made of bottle caps. I say 'made', it's layered over, one would assume, a wooden floor, but you can see the painstaking effort that went into this. Reminiscent of a mural or mosaic. Unconventional yet mesmerizing. 

This option is a derivative on the parquet style of wooden flooring. Now, whether you choose to paint before flooring, or after, I'd suggest hiring either a professional, or this could work equally well as a punishment for a artistically skilled, yet naughty child.

Have you ever heard of biomorphism? Outside of the 'Alien' films that is. No? It's the artistic movement that models designs on naturally existing patterns. Case in point, the swirly, wiggly wooden floor you see below. So, even if you go traditional, you can do something different with it.

Of course, if you're fairly wealthy, enjoy a tipple (judging from the photo, every night) and have a willingness to experiment with your flooring, you can always make use of your old champagne and wine cases.

But, at the end of the day, whether you go for bottle caps or bottle cases, coloured boards or wobbly trees, your best bet, as always, is to hire 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

Pitch Pine, neglected but loved

The other day we sent to boys out on a job and this is what they found.

Pitch Pine flooring, for those of you that don’t know is a very popular wood, mainly due to its hard wearing nature. It has this rich, unmistakable quality that you don’t find in new flooring and as such requires special attention. Often found in old Victorian buildings, its grain is symbolic of authenticity and the colours tend to grow warmer and even redder over time.

Like people, it is easy to forget that over the years wooden flooring can age, accumulate wear and tear and thicken ;-)

What the boys found was a floor that had spent the last fifteen years absorbing ever drop of moisture and wax thrown at it. Its colour had in fact deepened, but to a degree that the intrinsic grains and knots were all but invisible.

This called for some intensive care!

Breaking out the tools of the trade, the lads set to work. They huffed, they buffed, they sanded, they…did something else that rhymes and after some hard slog, they turned a much neglected pitch pine floor into a rather snazzy and fresh looking show-piece.  

If you find yourself sitting in your home one day and your eyes linger on your wooden floor, ask yourself, could it look better. If you start to um and ah, the answer is YES.

Don't delay, treat your flooring to the care it deserves, 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

Lovely parquet sanded in Cambridge

Have a look at this video. You can see how we sand the parquet flooring. We also apply hard wax oil that makes the floor looks natural.

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.

Wood floor sanding and sealing in Norwich Cathedral...

Art of Clean was recently awarded the work of sanding and sealing the floor of the beautiful Norwich Cathedral. The historical Cathedral has been beautifully designed inside and out, since the start of its construction in 1096.

Inside the building the wood floor is made by the manufacturer Junkers who make top quality hardwood floors. The floor inside the Cathedral had started to show signs of wear and tear, especially in their refectory, so the customer knew that it was time to clean the floor by sanding and sealing, before it got so bad that it needed a complete restoration. They asked us to clean two floors within the Cathedral.

Throughout this project we worked closely with Junkers, to make sure that our customers warranty stayed in tact. We followed the following process when cleaning the first floor:
• Stage 1 – First of all we applied Junkers wood cleaner
• Stage 2 – We then screened the floor back with a light sand to ensure that the fresh coating of polyurethane lacquer adhesive to the floor.
• Stage 3 – We then applied two new coats of Junkers Lacquer onto the wood floor.

The refectory wood floor was badly stained from through traffic

Stage 1 – We sanded the entire floor
Stage 2 – We applied Pallmann Magic Oil, which gives a great finish for commercial applications.

If a standard lacquer had been applied, then if certain areas wear more than others the whole floor would need to be sanded. This can be a problem between two rooms if there is not a door break dividing them. One of our other customers had this problem previously, so we advised them to have a brass strip installed between the two rooms. If you require this here are the details of a company we recommended.

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

What can I do with my newly discovered wood floor?

Discovering that a beautiful wood floor lies just beneath a shabby old carpet can be really exciting, and it’s at this stage that you will do a search on-line for a professional sanding company.

Before you search on-line for sanding company you will need to consider a few things:
• Is the floor worth sanding and which service do you require?
Before getting anyone to carry out the work on your newly discovered floor you will need to check out their credentials:
• Are they insured? Ask to see their insurance papers if unsure
• Have the had professional training? Check out their certificates
• Do they have experience? Ask to meet previous customers, check out references if necessary
• Do the company offer a guarantee? Make sure you ask for this in writing
• What finish do they recommend? These are some photos of a floor we recently restored with the above type of damage.
The floor was strip filled (this is the gap between the planks) and then we filled them strip with resin
You will need to think about what type of wood flooring you have. If you have a traditional wood floor and there are large gaps between the boards then it is likely to have been made from pine. If your boards are butted neatly together then they are likely to have been made from oak, but a professional opinion would be recommended at this point. If in doubt then ask Art of Clean for advice, we have specialist wood flooring experts in our team.

A pine floor is very soft and is not exceptional quality, whereas oak on the other hand if looked after well will serve you well for many years.