If you’re looking for help to repair scratches on lacquered floors, there’s one easy answer and that’s a lacquer pen. A lacquer pen is a pen which contains wood coloured lacquer and allows you to tackle random or non-extensive scratches on lacquered floors. Lacquer pens typically have a tip which can be adapted to distribute a small or a larger amounts of lacquer depending on the severity of your scratch.
Generally speaking, a lacquer pen will allow you to disguise small, spot scratches or slightly bigger, deeper scratches. Lacquer pens come in a variety of colours to suit the colour of your wood. If you’re worried about having perhaps not chosen the right colour, test out the pen on an unobtrusive part of your floor before applying it to an obvious part.
If the scratches on your lacquered floors are extensive, unfortunately a lacquer pen isn’t going to be an appropriate solution. If your scratches are due to day to day wear and tear and extend to the whole (or the main traffic areas) of your floor, it’s probably the right time to consider a complete re-sand and re-finish.
A full, wooden floor re-sand and re-finish is far from being a quick job and is something you should plan carefully. If you’re going to take on this job yourself, there are a few things you should consider:
Make sure you have a good range of sandpaper from heavy, 40 grit, through to fine, which may be anything up to 120 grit.
Remove all your furniture and soft furnishings from the room you’re planning to sand. Sanding is a messy business. Remember when moving your furniture not to drag it, lift it instead. Dragging furniture across wooden floors can be really damaging.
When your room is completely empty, give the floor a quick check to make sure that there are no nails or staples standing proud of its surface.
When you start to sand, use the heaviest grit and re-do the floor, working down to a finer grit each time (do the same with the edges if you’re using an edging sander).
When you’ve finished sanding, make sure you vacuum up all the dust which has collected on the floor, especially between any gaps in the boards.
Before you re-lacquer your floor, make sure you’ve left enough time after sanding for any airborne dust to have settled and been cleared away before moving on to the next phase.
If you’re in any doubt about tackling this job yourself, it’s probably best to call in the professionals.