Maybe it occurred to you when I showed you the feet of my inexpensive IKEA chairs that they were causing serious pain to my hardwoods.
That right there is the direct result of wood-on-wood scratching. The un-cushioned feet on the chair, and the polyurethaned floors. This wasn’t actually an issue for the first year that I had the chairs; reason being, we hardly ever used them. They sat at the dining room table all nicely cushioned and pushed in, so I won’t go on and on and pretend that I actually ate regularly at the table, because those occassions were few and far between.
Now that we’re working at home, we’re sitting at the table 50 hours/week and the floors are taking a real beating. That’s why at the beginning of the month, I vowed to get the situation under control. Easy fix. It’s not often that I’ve shopped around for chair sliders, but it was between this, and buying a new 9’x12′ carpet.
The variety of chair sliders out there is intense. I’m talkin’ from tennis ball buffers to the fancier nail-in variety that I also used when I was attaching the fabric and batting to the ottomans. Because the legs of my chairs are square, and the majority of chair sliders are sized for round pegs, I went rogue and brought home simple felt blankets (sounds so cozy). These cushy sheets are prepared with adhesive on one side.
And not for nothing, this DIY solution was about $4 less expensive than the precut variety that would have also done the job. I splurged on a mocha with my savings.
I know how to cut my own squares, after all. And better yet, now I can make them custom-sized to fit.
That’s exactly what I did after lightly sanding and cleaning each of the 16 chair feet. It’s not rocket science, cut-cut, stick-stick. Perfect the first time and every time. And it adds almost a 1/4″ to our seated height which is surprisingly noticeable.
There’s a lot left over for other projects and chairs too.
But the floors? Yikes. They were still pretty scratched up. Before I got all crazy, I wanted to try one remedy: Murphy Oil Soap.
The scent and finishing power of Murphy’s is more than just a little bit nostalgic, it makes me crave mashed potatoes, steak, and all of the other comfort foods that Mom could still provide if I put in a call, begging. And because of that, to date, it’s the only hardwood floor cleaner that I’ve ever used, so while I’m a big fan, take it with a grain of salt because I haven’t found a reason to test out the competition.
Fortunately for my hardwoods, a thin coat of the pure, concentrated oil rubbed right into the scratches, leveled out the shallow scratches and alleviated the intensity of the rougher spots. Scratches are longer obvious in day-to-day passing, and with the chairs properly padded, not likely to happen again.
Remember what it looked like before? Hurray.
P.S. I challenge you to find me a better wood floor cleaner. Seriously, sell me on it and I’ll go buy some.
6 Comments
Nice fix! I couldn’t believe the options either when I was looking to replace the feet on ours. I’ll totally have to remember this next time. And as for our dinner table… if it wasn’t for Sunday night family dinners I would have gotten rid of it looong ago. Hah.
It still feels kind of necessary to have a semi-formal space, right? I’ve often considered moving a couch in there and extending the living room though. I’m guessing that people would find that weird.
I have only ever used a vinegar&water solution on real hard wood floors personally; I am far too timid of taking any of the finish off – plus the whole all natural thing sells me when I have a dog, cats and kid who tend to lick\eat off the floor :P
Great idea! Thanks for the suggestion!
I’ve actually looked up quite a bit about the Murphy’s oil, having pulled up carpet and found I don’t even want to know how many years of grime stuck to the hardwood beneath. Professional hardwood floor people tend to say that Murphy’s oil is the absolute worst thing you can put on wood because it, as the name says, it’s oil. It makes redoing the poly on your floors super difficult because you have to make sure all the oil is completely off the floor, otherwise the poly will cloud over or, worse, not stick. I think we ended up just using soap and water for ours, but that obviously doesn’t shine it up. Our floors are in bad shape though, so there isn’t much point in trying to make them pretty (we’ll just save up for a professional redo).
Interesting tip!! I hadn’t thought of it like that before. Thank you for sharing! If your floors are in rough shape, I do totally recommend refinishing them with one of the floor sander rentals from Home Depot or a similar store; it was messy, and when you’re poly’ing, you’ll need to find another place to camp out for a few days, but SO much easier than I expected, and so much more affordable than hiring outside help.