One small victory

I've been so annoyed with my dining room floor for the past year or so, or maybe it's better to say I've been annoyed with the way my floor looks. After all, it's not the floor's fault or the dining room's fault. It's actually my fault as I failed to pay attention and communicate clearly with a woman who, with all good intention I'm sure, used to clean my home for me.

A year ago or so, I noticed my dining room floor looked very worn in certain high-traffic places. Or was it just dirty? I washed it of course, and nothing changed. Would I have to have the hardwood floors re-done? Oh I certainly hoped not, because then I would have to have the floors done throughout the whole first level of my house.  Not only would it be expensive but it would be a big pain to have to move all the furniture somewhere else for several days and not to be able to use the house. I hated to think about it, so I tried to ignore it. Here's how it's been looking - yuck.

It got worse, of course, and then one day about four months ago I ran my new steam cleaner over the part near the kitchen door and some of it came up. Underneath I could see unharmed hardwood. Oh glory, it didn't need to be re-done. But how to get all this up? What could it be, it was so dirty and yet regular washing wouldn't clean it? Suddenly I realized it was wax - layers and layers of wax, and probably applied over an already dirty floor.

That's when I remembered this floor wax that I had bought for my former housecleaner to use. It was an industrial strength wood cleaner and wax, and seemed like a great thing. Unless, that is, you used it too many times and that's what had happened. She (we) used it for years.

Until yesterday my floor sat there in its sad state, making me feel like a terrible steward of my home.

Yesterday I was steam cleaning the kitchen linoleum when I thoughtlessly put the steamer down on the dining room floor for a few minutes while I answered the door. When I came back the steamer seemed stuck to the floor. When I finally pushed it forward, all the wax came off that spot along with the dirt under it and we had a perfectly clean wood floor - in need of wax, but never mind that. Yippee!

I got all the chairs up on the dining room table and otherwise cleared the floor as much as possible. In an hour or so I had most of that old wax up. It looks great! Now I'm going to research the best wax to use and I'm never going to let more than one layer pile up again! Can't wait to show off my floor!