Does Anyone Here Still Wax Floors?

[vintagekitchen]

I had mentioned this on the vacuum site, But thought I would bring it up here. Does anyone else still wax floors here? I do the wood floor in the dining room twice a year, with buffings in between, and several friends have commented that although it's pretty, it's not worth the effort when you can buy Mop and Glo.

To me, there i something relaxing and Zen about the process and the steps, and the finished look is a thing of beauty. Mop and Glo will never look as good as old fashioned Johnson Paste Wax to me. (Nor will it feed and protect the wood as well.)

What about you guys?

 

[dustin92]

No, the only hard floors in our house are the bathrooms, and those are stick on linouleum tiles (yuck!)

 

[whirlcool]

In our last house we had that same kind of parquet all over the house. It wasn't tile, it was individually placed wood strips.

Once per year we would wash it down with Murphy's soap and then rinse and let dry for a few days. They we would wax it by hand using Johnson's Paste Floor Wax. We'd them buff it with a Hoover buffer. It would look beautiful.

But the dogs didn't enjoy this. They couldn't get traction on the floors. When they tried to walk on it their legs would lose traction and down they'd go. We finally had to add a few long runner type runs in the hall so they wouldn't hurt themselves.

In this house we have more stone floors and no wooden ones.

 

[vintagekitchen]

Whirlcool

You got it on the nose, it isn't tiles here either to my knowledge. I would love for it to be all through the house, (kitchen and bath are linoleum, living room hall and bedrooms are carpet), But if it was I think the twice yearly scrubbing and waxing might kill me, lol.

 

[washer111]

I Wonder If...

Waxing applies to Linoleum floor surfaces? The thing is, we tiled our old lino floor, because it was a "good ol' 80's Brown" and had the matching plastic skirtings, which were starting to peel off the walls. Really disgusting under there.

But I wonder if you could make Lino floors look the part with a good scrub, and some wax/polish. I certainly know they can't be doing it at school in any room, and whilst they have buffers the floors still look pretty dingy (some floors are a creamy which colour, and are pretty dirty most of the time)

 

[pulltostart]

I have red oak strip flooring throughout my house (built in 1958).  The only place that I have been waxing is in the hall where's a lot of traffic and where there is a tendency to be exposed to water due to the proximity of the bathroom and the dogs' water bowl.  As has already been noted, they are slick after they're freshly waxed and buffed, but I think the Johnson's Wax helps to protect the wood better than other options.

 

lawrence

 

[vintagekitchen]

Linoleum

It does come up really nicely. I dont know if you could see it, but the kitchen at the far end of the picture is 70's or 80's congoleum, but I usually just do it once a year. It seems to last longer than the wood, since the wood is more absorbant I guess.

 

[whirlcool]

All that waxing in our last house paid off. Our water heater decided to leak one year and flooded the hall with all that parquet in it. We used our Rainbow to suck it up. Fortunately the floor didn't warp or change color. We considered ourself very fortunate. We had friends who had a room with this stuff on the floor flood and all they had left was thousands of small wood strips all over the room.

It is a hard job, getting down on your hands and knees with a soft cloth applying the paste wax. But with a good pair of knee pads and a bottle of Advil ready it wasn't too bad.

 

[danemodsandy]

Waxing Vinyl Tile:

Is not easy these days, because two products I used to depend on are gone.

One is Johnson Wax's Glo-Coat. I really liked the sheen it gave vinyl. Now, you can still get Future Floor Finish if you know where to look, but it's a little harder shine, a tad too glossy/glassy for my taste.

The other is the Fuller Brush wax applicator. It had an applicator pad on a long handle, and the pad put down the exact, perfect amount of wax with each pass. There are other applicators out there, and there are sponge mops, but nothing is as good as the Fuller product was.

Now, if you wanna wax yaself some wood floors, you need to get busy and find an Electrolux B-8 shampooer/polisher. Heavy and reliable, it could buff up a shine on asphalt. Johnson's Paste Wax is the wax to use, of course.

Caveat Emptor: If you're looking for a B-8, make sure it still has its brushes and pads. If they're missing, they cost a FORTUNE to replace, and your bargain B-8 won't be a bargain any more.

 

[vintagekitchen]

Electrolux B-8

I dont know about that. Of course, it is faster than the Hoover polisher I used to use, but the Kirby does an awesome job. ^__^

 

[turquoisedude]

Yep

The "hardwood' floor in the parlor in Ogden is some kind of wood laminate that has to be waxed. I just did this about a month ago - buffed the floors up with a vintage 50s GE polisher, too!

 

[wiskybill]

Nothing here to wax...

but should the need arise, I'm ready....

 

[d-jones]

Back when I was in the Army (a lifetime ago it seems) waxing the barracks floors was a routine duty, and we had a way of doing it that was handed down by generations of soldiers before us. It involved Johnson's paste wax, matches, a buffing machine, and some terry cloth towels. The idea was to light the wax on fire in the can (sounds crazy, doesn’t it) and let it burn just long enough to melt the desired quantity for the floor we were doing. Then we blew it out and let it cool off a tad so we wouldn’t scorch the floor tiles. Once properly cooled it was poured out in various strategic places on the floor and spread around using the buffer. For those places the buffer couldn’t reach, like inside corners, the wax was applied by hand. Then after the wax had a chance to dry a bit, we’d fold up an Army bath towel into a nice square shape that matched the size of the buffing brush, put the buffer on top of it, and buff the floor. Done properly the floors looked spectacular, but I have to wonder sometimes if the whole business of lighting the wax on fire wasn’t done just because soldiers like to light stuff on fire.

 

[westingman123]

I do love my wax!

My kitchen is black and white checker pattern VCT tile. I wax it about 4 times a year, then buff with my Oreck Orbiter (a Christmas gift from friends who know how picky I am about my floors). Sandy, you wouldn't like it, though, the floor is very glassy afterwards. The rest of the house is red oak hardwood, which I only do twice a year. I agree, there's something very Zen about the entire process, and that smell! Takes me right back to childhood.

 

[Ultramatic]

Not in years...

<span style="font-size: medium;">I used to use Future, (remember Future?)...</span>
 

 
<span style="font-size: medium;">When I was little, my mom used Johnson's Glo-Coat. It came in gallon cans. She'd buff it to wonderful shine with the Regina floor polisher...then...you guessed it...it was sock skating time! </span>

 

[launderess]

For The Wood Floors, Yes

Have an older Hoover machine that applies the wax (one set of pads), then you swap out another to take up the wax and slighly buff after letting the wax dry/harden, then finally a fine lambswool to bring up the sheen. Oh and there is a set of pads (steel wool?) one can use to "clean" and rebuff the waxed floors instead of using a mop with water or other cleaners.

Will only do that sort of thing when weather permits leaving the windows open for several days to air the place out. The petrol fumes from the paste wax are horrible and get worse if one cooks anything on the range or uses the oven.

You can test a wood waxed floor's finish by applying a few drops of water. If it beads up then the finish then the finish is fine, however it it starts to at once sink into the wood then the finish needs to be redone.

In theory you shouldn't apply paste/wax to poly coated wood flooring one is told. Rather one uses whatever cleaners the maker or local wood floor professional recommends. Indeed really the only wood flooring that should be waxed is the old fashioned kind finished with either varnish and or several coats of wax as the original finish.

 

[mikeklondon]

Waxed Floors

HI Yes I do and I use a Fakir polisher

 

[polkanut]

OMG!  I think my Mom & Grandma used to buy Future by Johnson's Wax by the 55 gallon drum.  I still remember the smell when they'd do their kitchen floors.  YUCK!  The fumes used to give me headaches.

 

[danemodsandy]

There WAS a Downside!

One consequence of waxing floors is something I well remember:

It used to be that if you rented a house or an apartment, you often had to deal with built-up wax left by the previous tenant. One apartment I had in Chattanooga had INCREDIBLE buildup; it was Glo-Coat laid down by that lady who'd lived there before me, and she had been there for forty years.

It wouldn't have been so problematic had she waxed all her floor area, but oh, no.... She'd waxed around the periphery of her room-size rugs for forty years, leaving a nice walnut-toned border of Glo-Coat around the edge of each room - and golden oak in the middle.

Took a LOT of work to get that straightened out, trust me. I hope that landlord appreciated it.

 

[drewz]

Memories of the SMELL

 

Johnson's or Wood Preen, plus of course the little aqua GE floor polisher!

 

Don't drip on those wood floors coming out of the bathroom after a bath!  My mother used to get on me and my sister about those hardwoods, then we would be on our hands and knees or with the electric polisher.

 

My home does have beautiful hardwoods (red oak) under the WALL TO WALL CARPET, except the dining room for good reason.  I love hardwoods in theory but the dog doesn't like them and I still haven't considered uncovering them for fear I might have a flashback and turn into Joan Crawford and become obsessed. NO MORE WHITE WATER STAINS ON MY HARDWOODS!

 

 

[franksdad]

plus of course the little aqua GE floor polisher!

I used to help Mama use Johnson's paste wax and buff our hardwood floors with her aqua GE floor scrubber, buffer, and polisher back in the 60's.  Mama had a box full of attachments for that buffer.  It also had a plastic dispenser on the front for liquid floor polish.  I remember it was a lot of work we'd spend a whole day mopping, waxing, then buffing.  But the floors would be beautiful!  Mama would then use the scrubber to scrub the kitchen and bathroom floors.  I would beg to get to use this machine!  Then along came Future and the floor polisher went to the dump.  I would love to have that GE  buffer again.  (

 

[vintagekitchen]

Future

More like nightmare.. That stuff flat out stinks. It doesn't leave the lovely clean warm wood smell of Johnson Wax, just a harsh, hospital-ish smell in its wake. Doesn't shine like wax either, nor does the shine last as long.

Not to mention, no matter what the bottle says, it does cause a build up over time, and is far harder to scrub off than wax build up. Nasty beastly stuff.

 

[davey7]

I've got wax on my act (asbestos composition tile) bathroom floor - how do I get it off (without gasoline)? My floors could use a good waxing, cork bleeds a bit into fabric/rugs.

 

[vintagekitchen]

Cleaning off wax

Either get a bottle of liquid ajax cleanser with ammonia, or just some sudsy ammonia, mix it in a bucket of hot water, get some fine steel wool from the hardware section, and start scrubbing, lol.. Its how I always do mine.

If you have a polisher though, most have scrubbing pads/brushes available for removing old wax. Just pour some of the hot water/ammonia mixture on the floor, run the polisher with the scrubbing brushes until the wax is all scrubbed off, then mop the floor clean.

 

[whirlcool]

I lived in a high rise in Chicago that had a kitchen with a yellow floor. It looked terrible. The neighbors all had white tiles in their kitchens. So one day I used some ammonia in the wash bucket and used that on the yellow floor. Big pieces of was started to come up revealing a white floor underneath. Obviously the floor had been Mop & Glow'ed to death.

After I got the floor all back to white I used Future on it.I didn't think Future was a floor wax as much as it is an acrylic coating to put on your floor.
When I was done, the floor was beautiful. Especially at night when the skyline of downtown Chicago would reflect off the floor.

 

[whirlaway]

Really clean!!!!

I use fine steel wool and varasol to clean old wax and then I use bowling alley paste wax and buff it in with my old maroon hoover buffer.Really makes a good durable finish,my beagle slips and slides,so I have plenty of rugs down for him.Bowling alley wax was made by the NaNor company,right here over in Norfolk.They stopped about 15 years ago,so I bought all I could get my hands on.Its really good for furniture.Leaves a hard coating lasts for a long time.To remove heavy wax on rubber or vinyl,try some organic 3m paint stripper.I found the original blue and white rubber tiles under 2floors of tiles,it was dark brown from years of putting wax on it,it really cleaned up beautifully with that stripper.Its the original 1938 floor.

 

[davey7]

Thanks, ya know, I should never have given away my mom's old bissel carpet shampooer. Oh, well, I rented at the time and didn't care.

Do you think steel wool is safe on asbestos tile (I know, I know, it takes a lot to get various cancers/etc from it)?

 

[whirlaway]

Steel Wool Safe?

Get the finest you can get,and keep it wet and you should be OK.Wear gloves and try a small area first.Should clean your floor very well.Good luck!!!!! Bobby

 

[launderess]

Yes, Steel Wool Is Fine. Long As One Uses The Proper Grade

Any decent hardware shop will stock rows of packets of steel wool in various grades. Packets usually are marked on back telling what grade is used for which purpose.

Commercial floor finishers and cleaners use steel wool of various grades to clean, buff and otherwise maintain wood and certain other types of flooring. Instead of using water based products and or a mop it is better to use a fine grade steel wool pad to clean and top off buff polished wood floors between full out waxings.

 

[alr2903]

Wood flooring is a commitment

The original 5 rooms and hall in this house were hardwood covered by carpet,  we had them professionally sanded, stained (nutmeg), and sealed with polyurethane.  A damp mop and your good to go.  I was told by the floor crew that in the future years and years from now it would need to be screened (fine buffing screen on a commercial buffer), and resealed,  they also advised me to keep direct sunlight off the floor, so i pull  down the east shade shade in the AM. Never ever go through this process unless the season is appropriate to open all the windows, the odor is unbearable.  alr