Walking into a room with hardwood floors makes one admire its natural elegance and beauty. Many times, the floors set the tone for the entire room. However, one of the things that mar its beauty is scratches on the hardwood floors. Some scratches can be treated, prevented and disguised. Certainly, one preventive idea is on how to stop kitchen chairs from scratching hardwood floors. Sometimes, one will tend to apply the area rug solution to avoid the scratches from the kitchen chairs. However, kitchen chairs move around a lot and it is one of the things frequently used in the kitchen. Unless you want to cover up the whole area of the table and chairs, you might as well refrain from having hardwood floors in the first place if that’s the case.
Kitchen chairs often have wooden legs or metal legs. Both types can really do damage to your hardwood floors by moving around and scratching surfaces. But there are simple ideas on how to stop kitchen chairs from scratching hardwood floors. You just need the leg work:
• POLISH UP can be applied only to light wooden chairs. Often, it’s the rough edges of the legs that scratch the hardwood floors. To stop this, you can consider softening up the edges of the legs of the chair and its bottoms by sanding and oiling it up. Then you can finish it with some polish or wax. This way, the chair leg bottoms will have less friction on the floors and will glide, not scratch the floors when it moves. However, the more you use the kitchen chairs, the more you need to polish it up regularly to avoid roughing the edges (of chair leg bottoms) out.
• PAD WORK can be applied to both wooden and metal chair legs. For a better fit, measure the area of the chair bottoms and make cut-outs on felt or rubber. Glue in the felt or rubber cut-outs to the chair leg bottoms. Let it sit and give it time to dry before using the kitchen chairs. Both felt and rubber have smoother, non-scratchy materials that can be helpful to minimize scratches on your hardwood floors. You just need to redo it again if the material has already worn out.
• WHEEL ON is actually an idea for office chairs. Wheels can actually scratch only the surface of polyurethane-coated hardwood floors but not on the wood itself. Superficial scratches can easily be treated by waxing kits, therefore not much damage to the floors. As a kitchen chair however, putting wheels may pose some hazards when you have kids around. This is only applicable if there are only a few adults around and you are not expecting social gatherings in your kitchen area.
• COVER UP is probably the best option on how to stop kitchen chairs from scratching hardwood floors. Again, you measure the chair leg bottoms for a perfect fit. Often, the bottoms are shaped square, rectangular or round. With some exceptions of artwork and carvings on the legs, the bottoms will pretty much take one of these three shapes. Create a pattern on soft padded materials or heavy fabric like felt, denim or old carpet rugs no longer in service. Create a pattern for inner shape which is the exact measurement of the chair leg bottoms. Then create a larger outer shape about 4-5 inches wide where the inner shape is at the center. Cut the edge of the large shape, with the idea of pouch bags and open-top boxes in mind.
Pouch bag is sewing an inside fold around the inner shape and sewing an elastic strip at the helm of your outer shape. Open-top box is like having a box with 5 sides. You sew in the square bottom and then sew in the four other sides that stood up. When five sides are made, sew in an elastic strip at the outer hem. You can make creative cover ups, colorful or discreet depending on your taste, for as long as you make it functional. Unsightly scratches diminish the beauty and art work of the hardwood floors. You can stop, control and prevent it from happening, you just need a little leg-work trick.
1 comments