LIFESTYLE

How To Remove Dents From Your Soft Wood Floors // Heat and Steam

On August 27, 2020
By Kimberly

Protecting your soft wood floors doesn’t always work; sometimes you drop something and make a dent. Here’s how to either lessen the appearance of that dent, or, remove it nearly completely.

Heat and Steam

My floors are cypress, that is even softer than pine, which is notoriously soft. Dog claws, chair legs – everything makes marks. Sometimes, though, the dents are so noticeable that I wish to remove or lessen their appearance.

Take a damp cloth and an iron and steam the dents.

That’s it! Really! Make sure to keep the cloth really damp. Keep the iron hot. Make that sizzling noise like a steak on a grill. A steam iron works even better.

Why This Works

The reason this works is wood really wishes to return to it’s normal state. A dent disrupts the flow of the wood. If you can get to it quickly and inject steam, you can coax the fibers to return to their normal shape.

Dents that have been in the floor for awhile – say a month – can be lessened, but probably not completely removed. Deep dents may “lift” up a good deal, but probably not completely if they’ve sat and the wood fibers have become accustomed to their new alignment.

Test Run

I would suggest trying your first pass in the back of a closet to make sure your floor coating can handle the heat and steam.

Bad Damage

This week, I realized the step stool I have been using for months to access the top of a closet actually has worn-out leg protectors and damaging the wood floor. I thought the vacuum cleaner was making all the circular dents.

My New Iron – Wow!

Simultaneously, I had invested in a new iron, and the new irons have so many amazing features! Anyway, in doing a few test runs on shirts, I realized that the steaming feature on my new iron is fantastic. It’s so powerful, I can use the iron as a clothing steamer alone.

Since I don’t have to use a spray bottle of water while I’m ironing now, I have reduced the time to iron a long-sleeved dress shirt from four minutes, and a short-sleeved dress shirt from three minutes to two minutes.

I think the decrease in time is due to not having to double-back ever, and steaming while ironing is just plain faster.

Once I saw how fast and powerful this iron is, I realized it was a good time to get on the floor and work on any especially unattractive dents in my wood floor. It worked wonderfully!

Here’s the iron I ordered: PurSteam Professional Grade 1800-Watt Steam Iron with Digital LCD Screen, 3-Way Auto-Off, Double-Layer Ceramic Soleplate, Axial Aligned Steam Holes, Self-Clean with 9 Preset Steam & Temp Settings.

It’s description is so long because it does so much! I had no idea modern irons do all this. We have well water, so the self-cleaning feature is going to be a really great feature as well.

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