Cleaning floors

[xanthe]

Just to put you in the picture/off your lunch.

In my continued 'war on cat pee', I decided to start cleaning the wooden floors here, starting with our bedroom (huge C17th oak boards) and the sitting-room (C19th deal boards).

Being the age they are, there are big gaps and you wouldn't want to sit a spirit level on them.

Unfortunately, the gaps were filled with a mix of dirt, dust, cat sick, hair balls and poo. Underneath this were maggots and carpet beetle lavae. One small infill section lifted up and I actually thought we had woodworm due to little maggots inside the damp wood (turned out to be carpet beetle lavae.

The ceiling underneath is made of fibreboard and needs to come down anyway as is a fire-risk, and I'm thinking sooner rather than later and just deal with the extra ventilation between our room and the sitting-room below.

The pine boards downstairs weren't quite as revolting thank goodness.

None of the floors here have been looked after in decades - or at least not properly.

There was once some kind of finish on the pine boards that has completely gone on most of the room and flakes off very easily where it is still there.

I'm leaving the whole process of waxing etc alone for now (should we leave the boards bare - ie no wax - until all building work done?) but really want to clean them.

I can't slosh water about too much due to the sitting room floor being the ceiling to the cellar and I don't want to damage things. However the infill piece of bedroom floor that lifted up (about 1ft long and 4" wide) took a couple of minutes of scrubbing to get clean.

Would a steam cleaner be any use?

Any other suggestions of chemicals or techniques? I have a 'very high tolerance for disorder' so the fact I'm revolted should say rather a lot!

 

[Moo]

It might be worth hiring a carpet cleaning machine to remove a lot of the superficial dirt.
Don't let the word 'carpet' put you off - it's really just a device that squirts a spray of soapy water on the dirty surface and almost immediately sucks it up, so that the floor is left barely damp.
Very useful for post-builder cleaning.

 

[a twig]

We used a steam cleaner very successfully in a similar situation at our last place - buy/hire a good one though, a cheapo off amazon or whatever will take ages to heat up and not do as good a job at cleaning.

 

[Zebra]

I've never used a steam cleaner, but I think I'd be wary of using steam on a 17th century floor. I took the ceiling down here, underneath an old floor of 17th/18th century wide pine boards. Out fell centuries worth of mouse nests and all manner of muck and filth. Then I used an old blunt saw to clean between the boards, a sort of black crusty goo fell into the room beneath. Then I walked about upstairs on the bare boards for a while, and kept sweeping up often.
I ended up covering up the old floor upstairs with more boards on top, as it was too damaged to restore, I thought. But I thought about giving it a slosh with some white spirit and pemethrin, as this is a clear liquid and doesn't change its appearance. I don't know whether that would help combat the smell of cat pee. It could make a horrendous combination.
You say you had some live critters living in the damp floorboards? That sounds like more of a worry to me. I think I'd be wanting to let the floor dry out properly, and allowing the smell to go all by itself.

 

[xanthe]

I'm going to look into these carpet cleaning/steam machine things. Sounds hopeful.

The deal boards have taken plenty of abuse over the years so I'm happy to bash them about some more. I've degunked about half the room and started scrubbing each board one by one with the bicarb/vinegar and dish soap mix and scraping them down which seems to be removing all dirt and varnish remnants. Andy says the cat pee smell is 100 times worse in there now so I'm probably making inroads. It's slow going though.

While I'm prepared to attack downstairs, my oak floorboards are my new babies and I don't want to do anything bad to them. I had wondered if one of those mini steam-cleaners of the shopping channel ilk might have been a good way to clean and kill anything in the gaps between the boards.

It's half term and I'm in for 2 whole weeks and I am so tempted to just pull the ceiling down while Andy is at work. Am also disgusted at the thought of what will come down with it!

Oh, I did find a gold and diamond earring. Modern, not old, which I shall probably be nice about and send to the PO (shall I send it wrapped in the cat products :twisted:

 

[MatthewC]

Oh, I did find a gold and diamond earring. Modern, not old, which I shall probably be nice about and send to the PO (shall I send it wrapped in the cat products :twisted:

+1
:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[xanthe]

Managed to do one gap between boards yesterday (several hours work) - profit was another gold earring, £1.01 and $1...

I'm going to use a mix of white spirit and distilled white vinegar and a toothbrush to clean the oak boards and see how that goes. Should evaporate fast enough to not damage them like water would.

Husband is working from home so can't accidently remove ceiling :evil:

 

[LadyArowana]

Managed to do one gap between boards yesterday (several hours work) - profit was another gold earring, £1.01 and $1...l:

Did the earring make a pair with the first one?

 

[xanthe]

Sadly not.

Although am I strange in feeling that if I turned up a real C17th bit of bling I would happily clean it off and wear it, yet despite having an ultrasonic cleaner, I wouldn't wear these...

Have found a couple of gold butterflies for earrings and those I am keeping as they get lost so easily!

Had a new find today. PO spent much time extolling the virtues of her builder who had apparently done the built in wardrobes in our bedroom.

I'd always thought that the cupboards were actually pretty unimpressive and old fashioned and today I discovered why.

The only carpet in the house is inside these cupboards and the cats have been in there too. So I decided to rip up the carpet and just have the bare oak boards. Got the scissors and knives etc and having prised up carpet and underlay I found a layer of newspaper...... from 1969! Given the PO bought the house in 2001, either she's fibbing or their builder has some very funny habits if he puts down 40 year old newspapers first. Whoever did slopped paint all over the boards grrr.

I went and cut down dead things in the garden to escape cat poo for a few hours. It's immensely slow work... the stuff is like concrete and even with a chisel, scissors, knife and one of those blade things for poly filling with, it's taking over an hour to do a single gap.

Tomorrow I'm going to clean the bits I've done so far with the white spirit/vinegar mix and see what happens.

Any other floor cleaner recipes?

 

[Zebra]

Perhaps the correct substance for conquering cat pee is dog pee.

 

[angrybird]

Ahhh!!... like pouring white wine on spilt red wine ???? :lol:

I have a better idea... drink copious amounts of red wine until you pass out and can no longer smell the cat pee :twisted: