How to make your old floors shine again

What to do when your old floors are begin­ning to show their age? Our expert explains when you should con­sider a com­plete renov­a­tion and when it may be suf­fi­cient to simply repair or replace the worn or dam­aged sur­faces. In addi­tion, he recom­mends the use of products that are safe for your health and for your home.

Tip 1: Replace only damaged tiles and re-grout

You don’t always need to com­pletely rip out the exist­ing floor­ing when there are vis­ible signs of aging. With a tiled floor, for instance, it is often suf­fi­cient to simply replace those tiles that have cracks or chipped corners. Homeown­ers usu­ally have a few spare tiles of the cur­rent floor cov­er­ing stored away in the base­ment or gar­age. Once the dam­aged tiles have been replaced, the floor can be re-grouted.

Tip 2: Carefully and completely remove old textile flooring

If old tex­tile floor­ing has been glued to the sub­floor, remov­al can be chal­len­ging. If a water-sol­uble adhes­ive was used, you can peel the car­pet off rel­at­ively eas­ily after moisten­ing it (approx. 1 to 2 hours). If a tack­i­fi­er was used, the old floor­ing can be removed without leav­ing any residues. For non-water-sol­uble adhes­ives, machines known as floor strip­pers are used. Once the old car­pet­ing has been removed, adhes­ive residue may remain on the floor. This and any oth­er residue can be sanded off without cre­at­ing dust with the help of spe­cial machines. Finally, the sur­face can be primed, lev­elled off and thus pre­pared for the new floor­ing

Tip 3: Refinish vinyl and design flooring: small steps, big impact

You can almost always refresh vinyl or design floor­ing that has been glued to the sub­floor. In a first step, pre­pare the floor by clean­ing it and then sand it down. After that, apply a new fin­ish­ing coat. This pro­cess not only allows you to choose a new sur­face col­or but also to cre­ate vari­ous effects, e.g., by sprink­ling in colored glit­ter. After this treat­ment, your vinyl or design floor­ing will shine like new again.

Tip 4: Enjoy the long service life of glued-down parquet

Wooden floors made e.g. of wooden floor­boards, par­quet or wood­b­lock can be refin­ished mul­tiple times, thus giv­ing them an extremely long ser­vice life (with prop­er care, sol­id wood par­quet can last 60 to 100 years). This makes them par­tic­u­larly sus­tain­able. Over the years, wood floor­ing can be roughened or sanded down sev­er­al times. After rough­en­ing or sand­ing, the sur­face can be com­pletely refin­ished by apply­ing an oil or var­nish coat. Wooden floor­ing glued dir­ectly to the screed has proven to be more dur­able than “float­ing” install­a­tions: Glued-down par­quet is much more stable, can with­stand heav­ier loads, and can be sanded down more eas­ily.