How to Remove Dog Nail Scratches From Wood Flooring

Wood floors are usually stained, then sealed in with a glossy top layer of varnish or polyurethane that protects the wood surface from moisture and dirt while adding an attractive shine to it. Dogs’ nails can wreck havoc on a wood floor, scratching up the gloss surface. The good news is that those scratches are almost always confined to the gloss, not the wood itself, so you can get rid of them by screening off the old gloss and replacing it, without getting into a major sanding-and-staining project.

Floor buffer
Screening pads, medium and fine abrasion
Vacuum cleaner
Polyurethane
Paintbrush
Fine sandpaper

Instructions

- 1
  Set up the floor buffer with a medium flooring screen. Screen the floor in the direction of the floorboards. Push the buffer forward and back, gradually moving across the whole floor, grinding off the top layer of the existing gloss.
- 2
  Vacuum the floor to remove the dust.
- 3
  Remove the medium screen from the buffer and replace it with the fine screen. Screen the floor again, in the same manner as before. Make sure the floor scratches are completely gone. Vacuum. The surface should be dull and clean, but the underlying stain of the floor should be unaffected.
- 4
  Brush on a coat of polyurethane gloss with your paintbrush. Brush with the direction of the floor boards. Keep the coat thin and smooth. Do the entire floor.
- 5
  Let the polyurethane set for 8 hours. Hand-sand the surface with fine sandpaper, using light, quick strokes to dull the gloss. Vacuum.
- 6
  Brush on a second coat of polyurethane in the same manner as the first. Let it set for 24 hours.

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