Distressed wood flooring provides a distinct aged and worn aesthetic to your home that many find attractive. While you can purchase pre-distressed wood flooring, in order to make a floor truly your own and customize it to your own interior design needs, you may want to distress the wood yourself. Thankfully, this is a fairly simple process that you can do with just a few basic tools.
What You'll Need
Before you get started, you'll want to make sure that the job site is adequately prepared and that you have all of your tools and materials ready to speed the process up as much as possible. You'll need a wire brush or steel wool, an electric sander or sandpaper, a hammer, a vacuum cleaner, a can of wood stain (various shades and finishes are available, so choose the one that best fits your desired aesthetic), and a paint brush. You may also want to use gloves to keep your hands protected while working. Keep in mind that you can actually use a wide variety of different tools to distress hardwood flooring: wire brushes, hammers, and sandpaper just tend to be the easiest to use.
Distressing Hardwood Flooring
Begin working on the wood with your chosen distress tools: wire brushes and steel wool can be used to create scuffs, sandpaper can be used to wear away the wood slightly, and hammers can actually deform the wood and create divots. Keep in mind that you want to distress the surface of the wood and not actually break apart the boards or cause any physical damage that will compromise the structural integrity of your flooring.
Work with the grain as much as possible, as this will create a more authentic appearance of wear on your floorboards. Furthermore, try to keep in mind which areas receive the most foot traffic (usually the middle of hallways and around doorways or thresholds of rooms), as these areas will require more work and wear to create a truly distressed look, whereas the floor next to walls and in out of the way areas will likely only require light sanding to create a worn appearance.
Work room by room to make the entire project manageable and so that you can stay on top of cleanup. Once you've distressed all of the floorboards in a single room, you'll want to use the vacuum cleaner to remove all of the built-up sawdust. Once the floor has been cleaned, you can apply your floor's stain. Keep in mind that two coats of stain is optimal, as this will protect your newly exposed floorboards from moisture damage and additional wear.
To learn more about wood flooring, contact a company like K J M Floor Store.
Share19 September 2017
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