Long scratches in hardwood floor in rental -- seeking advice from landlords and flooring experts

[Anonymous]

A few months ago DH, DS, and I moved into an apartment with nice medium-dark hardwood floors. A few weeks ago, I noticed a couple long wavy scratches, 3 or 4 feet long. I don't think they were there before, because due to the way the light falls into our apartment and their location, they are very obvious. We haven't been moving furniture, and DS is not walking yet, so the only thing I can think of is that the housecleaners dragged a vacuum in the area. They don't look like the little light scratches you get from furniture. They seem deeper, and they seem to show up slightly darker than the surrounding wood, but I can't tell if that's just because the surrounding finish has just been roughed up on the sides.

Anyway, two questions:
1.) Is there any way to fix these scratches or make them less obvious? The color marker type stuff won't work because the problem is not so much the color, it's the depression, which reflects the light differently from the surrounding surface.
2.) How much would you expect our deposit ($2400) to be dinged for this? We plan to stay in this apartment for another 21 months. Our landlord is kind of finicky, which is nice because the apartment is generally in great shape. We are generally very conscientious tenants, and have always gotten 90-100% of our deposit back, which is why the scratches bother me so much.

[Anonymous]

You can call a flooring place and ask how much they'd charge to fix it. You need to tell them the type of wood floor it is, include the brand if you can.

[Anonymous]

Landlord here. Do not fix it yourselves! I would be more upset if you used someone cheap and they made it worse. HW floors can only be sanded three times, so it could mean that they'd have to replace the entire floor. Besides, if you've just moved in, now is not the time to do it.

There's not much you can do until you move out, aside from trying to keep the floor from getting further scratched. We've had two rentals, and the one that is our main rental, I'd never put hardwood floors in, too difficult to maintain. We moved into one of our rentals, and the tenants ruined the hardwood floors in two spots where they used wheeled chairs without protection. We didn't ding them, but they'd lived here for 5 years and took good care of the place otherwise.

Be good tenants and keep the place tidy. You have 21 months to get to know your landlord and then you can better deal with the situation.

[Anonymous]

I would get HUGE area rugs to protect the floors from future scratches too. Make sure you ask the cleaning people about it so they don't do it again week after week if it did happen to be something they caused.

[Anonymous]

I "fixed" the floors in a rental before I moved out by buying stain the same color as the floor and rubbing it into the scratches. looked good as new.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for the responses. Yes, we wouldn't fix it ourselves or hire someone to do it unless it were a very easy fix, which it doesn't seem to be. I am hoping that it's a scratch in the top layer wax or varnish (don't know if that's the correct terminology) and not a gouge into the wood itself. Our floors have a high shine on them so it seems possible.

[Anonymous]

OP, if I were you I would try rubbing the color crayon, and top it with a layer of plain parrafin wax. should fill the scratch adequately and is nothing that couldn't be buffed out. Don't let your landlord screw you on the security deposit--normal wear and tear is not something he can charge you for.

[Anonymous]

Don't laugh -- but, on a whim one day, I bought this thing called a "Krazy Kloth." I don't remember where. Anyway, I tried it on some scratches on my floor, and it really did make them "go away." The scratches are still there, of course, but whatever is in the cloth rendered them virtually invisible. I don't want to know what is in it (I use gloves to handle it), but it really did make my floors look better. If your scratches aren't that deep, it's worth a try.

[Anonymous]

I'm a homeowner and I hate my hardwoods. There, I said it. It's next to impossible to avoid scratches if you actually, you know, LIVE in your house and you know they are so expensive that you want to keep them nice. The only exception is hardwoods that have been in place 50+ years that have already been worn all to hell, because then that's "character".

Anyway, I would try a few topical solutions, but leave it alone if those don't work. Hardwoods are meant to be refinished at least a few times, and if the LL wants to do that, he'll tell you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a homeowner and I hate my hardwoods. There, I said it. It's next to impossible to avoid scratches if you actually, you know, LIVE in your house and you know they are so expensive that you want to keep them nice. The only exception is hardwoods that have been in place 50+ years that have already been worn all to hell, because then that's "character".

Anyway, I would try a few topical solutions, but leave it alone if those don't work. Hardwoods are meant to be refinished at least a few times, and if the LL wants to do that, he'll tell you.

The reason the old ones look nice is because they're probably waxed, not polyuerethaned (sp?). I had always insisted on wax, not polyuerethane before my present house. Here, we were under time pressure, so I consented to the plastic stuff. Never again. It scratches when you look at it. If you put down wax, you simply reapply and buff the high traffic areas about once a year, and it just looks better and better over time. I once had a flooring person keep trying to sell me poly, but when I persisted, they finally admitted that wax is better. It's just they can charge more for poly, and then come back and redo your floors in a few years when they look like crap.

[Anonymous]

YOu can go to a home store and get a filler pencil in the color of the floor. You can also try this thing called "Zenith Tibet Almond Stick" - works wonders on scratches on eood furniture.