I love wood floors. We did a kitchen addition several years ago and put wide, pine, wooden planks in and it looks and cleans beautifully. Of course it shows all the dings and divets, but I think that gives it charm.

We also have wooden floors in other rooms in our home. They are so easy to keep clean.

I say use the real product!

We bought a house last year that is 136 years old. There are two large sections of hardwood floor that are original. My girlfriend gave me this tip that makes them shine like a new penny. I take amonia and water and give them a good washing. I let that dry and then use Liquid Future Floor wax. A friend of ours is in the flooring business and eventhough the bottle says not to use it on wood floors, he says it will not harm them...I've been using the Future floor wax on my floor for almost 2 years now and my goodness are they beautiful. They're one of the first things a person notices. I also use the liquid floor wax on my painted stairs (they're painted high gloss black) and goodness do they shine as well). Neither the floor nor the stairs become slippery...just beautiful. Normally, I put at least two coats on letting each dry between coats for about 8-10 hours...that way when I do put my furniture back there aren't any scratches. I love this stuff!!!

We were blessed to find it. It's work...seems I get all the cleaning done and poof!!! I start all over again. But, it's worth it. My husband, bless him, is busy calking up every crack in the house he can find, painting the screens with a fresh coat of pain and getting the house ready for winter. It's going to be around 30 tonight, which for our neck of the woods is very cold. He'll be back out tomorrow doing some more work. We hope to be finished with the touchup by the end of the week and then we can relax in front of the fire in the evenings with a cup of hot chocolate or apple cider. I love this time of year.

Oh, Dee...that is so funny that you use Future floor wax too! I learned that trick from my mother. Actually, she started out using Future, years ago, but then she found the store brand worked just as well. I have all hardware floors in my old house (except for the kitchen/bath), and it works like a charm!

I am going to come back to this post in the spring. We had our floors scheduled to be done next week but postponed it unti the spring. They need refinishing and it's such a mess. I didn't want to deal with it before the holidays. Anyway, I'm going to give your method a try. Thanks so mcuh.

Good luck Dotsie. You won't regret the effort after you see the finished product. If I do this again, however, I'm going to sand down the wood floors a touch and put a polyurithane coating of some type over it so I don't ever have to wax them again...my girlfriend did her floors that way and they're just as beautiful.