If you’re searching for ways of repairing scratches on oiled floors, the chances are you’ve invested in a nice new wooden floor and had a bit of an “accident”. Alternatively, scratches could be caused by simple wear and tear. The approach you take to repairing the scratches on your oiled floor will depend to a large degree on the extent of the scratching.
If you have an overall coverage of “wear and tear” scratches on your oiled floor, there’s little point in tackling these with a floor pen or a wax stick. What you may need to think about is a complete re-sand and re-finish. If it does happen that you need to re-sand and re-finish your floor, then you will need to think carefully about whether this is a job you want to tackle on a DIY basis or if you want to call in the professionals.
Full, wooden floors re-sand and re-finish is not a quick job and needs to be planned. If you plan to take on this job yourself, there are a few things you should bear in mind.
Select a range of sandpaper from heavy, 40 grit, through to fine, which may be anything up to 120 grit.
Make sure you remove all furniture and soft furnishings from your room because sanding is messy. Take care when you remove your furniture not to drag it because this could cause even more extensive damage.
Once you have the room completely empty, make sure that there are no nails or staples standing proud of your floor.
Start to sand, with the heaviest grit and re-do the floor, working with a finer grit each time (apply the same rule to the edges if you’re using an edging sander).
When you’ve finished sanding, vacuum up all the dust which has collected on the floor, especially between any gaps in the boards.
Leave enough time between sanding and oiling to make sure any airborne dust has settled and has been cleared away before moving on to the next phase.
If you need to repair the odd random scratch on an oiled floor, you can buy a floor pen or a wax stick from your floor supplier or any good DIY shop. Floor pens come in a range of wood colours and wax sticks can be softened and used as a filler for deeper scratches. Both of these will do the trick to disguise scratches which are not too excessive or too wide-spread.