Hardwood floor refinishing can quickly restore the good looks of many types of rooms and buildings. Owners of these four kinds of places should be aware of the need to finish the floors at their locations.

Businesses with High Rates of Foot Traffic

Many businesses have hardwood floors, and these can make them look very nice. It is especially important to work with a wood floor finishing contractor if your location has fairly irregular traffic. For example, a store with hardwood floors may have areas where there's a lot more foot traffic than elsewhere in the business. Bars and restaurants with wood floors also need to be sensitive to how wear and tear can require attention.

The problem often boils down to how feet dig grooves into the surface. People walking on the surface are unlikely to spread their tracks out across a room. Consequently, they form tracks in the wood not unlike what you see with animal trails in the wild. These areas will be lower than the surrounding wood, and that will make the floor uneven or wavy.

Rooms in High Humidity Regions

Another potential source of damage to floors is humidity. Even if you've used treated wood and sealed the floor impeccably, wear and tear will still expose more of the materials to humidity over time. Over time, the humidity will permeate the hardwood, causing it to warp. Sometimes this is barely noticeable, but the wood can get a bit noodle-like in its unevenness. Hardwood floor refinishing will shave the top of the wavy area off, leaving it flush with the rest of the wood on the floor.

Post-Disaster Recovery

Heat, water, and smoke from disasters and accidents can also do significant damage to hardwood floors. This doesn't necessarily mean the wood needs to go, though. In many cases, tougher hardwoods will survive disasters relatively unscathed. However, just like happens with humidity, the heat from a fire or the wetness from a flood can cause the floors to warp.

Distortion is an especially common problem if the floors dry rapidly. If you have a flood from a busted water pipe, for example, fans or even dry air could cause the floors to dry speedily. This at first will seem like a good thing, but fast drying is an accelerated version of the process that makes floors wavy.

Restoration

Old hardwood floors are gorgeous, but they might not age well. If you bought a house to renovate, for example, the floors are likely to require hardwood floor refinishing for one of the many above reasons.

Contact a wood floor refinishing contractor for more information.