Wood Flooring Mold Problems

Mold problems offer serious concerns for the people who love to have wood floors. With only a little carelessness, molds may come into play and the beauty of your floor is lost.

Wood floors are attractive and useful, but require continuous maintenance in order to hold their initial finish and texture. If, for any reason, your wood floor is exposed to water or high moisture for a long duration, mold may start developing and you have to initiate remedial measures to tackle the problem.

Moisture is the number one enemy of wood flooring – this is key to keep in mind. Those who have used water-based finishes have even higher chances of facing wood flooring mold problems, and must be always vigilant to watch out for any mold growth. Also, a humid climate can easily worsen your conditions.

The following are the most common causes:

• Weak floor finish, causing mopping waters to remain in touch with woods for longer duration
• Presence of high humidity inside the rooms
• Scratched and damaged floor parts allowing water depository
• Presence of flowerpots - the highly influential factor affecting wood flooring mold problems
• Improper drainage, especially in kitchens and toilets

Removing Mold in Wood Flooring

The most widely used tool for removing molds is a scraper. You may find different sizes of scrapers available at your nearby hardware store, collect one suitable size - preferably one with 8 inches wide. To work with it, hold the scraper firmly over the molded floor and pull along the grain. Always keep the scraper flush with the floor; else, it may damage finish of your decorated floor.

After finishing the scraping work, you should use a sanding sponge to route out your wood flooring mold problems. 180-grit Sanding sponge is used for finish removal; and like scraper, sanding is also required to be done along the grain of the wood. Continue using a sanding sponge until all molds are removed.

To accelerate mold removal, you may consider spraying some Clorox in a diluted solution. But be careful, as excessive or improper usage of Clorox may damage your floor extensively - use at your own risk!

After finishing your work with 180-grit sand paper, now use one 200-grit sand paper and sand for few times. Before finally finishing your task, touch up the area with an appropriate finish.

If wood flooring mold is treated well in time, you can easily save much more time, money, and of course the glory of your wooden floors. A finished floor is less susceptible to the mold problems.