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Here are some basic hardwood flooring maintenance tips for anyone that has new, old, or recently refinished hardwood floors. Sweep and vacuum your hardwood floors regularly: Particles like grit, gravel, and salt are abrasive. Your weight on top of those particles turns you into sanding machine that will grind down the finish on your floor. Do not clean the floor with furniture polish, vinegar, ammonia, pine cleaners, or Murphy’s Oil Soap: Those cleaners may dull or even damage the finish and will create problems when your floor needs recoating. We recommend Bona Professional Swedish Hardwood Cleaner for all polyurethane-finished floors and Rubio Natural or Satin soap for all Monocoat-finished floors. The Bona professional line is actually different and better than the Bona cleaner that is available through Ace and WalMart because it contains a degreaser. Recoat your hardwood floors before you wear any spots through to bare wood: Wood floors don’t wear evenly. You will see wear first appear in small spots at exterior doors and in front of the fridge. Those little-worn spots of driftwood cannot be spot-fixed; once you’ve killed the finish in one area, you need to resand the entire space. Keep a vigilant eye on your trouble spots and recoat the floor BEFORE they wear through. There is not a finish on the market today that will last even 10 years unless you periodically refresh it. Recoat your floors when they first appear scratched and dull, but before they are worn through to bare wood. This can be as often as every year for kitchens that are not swept, or as infrequently as every 15 years in upstairs bedrooms. Recoating involves lightly etching the existing finish of a floor with a fine grit screen under a buffer or pole sander and then laying down a single layer [...]