I’ve spent the last couple of months updating two bedrooms in my home.  I pulled the carpet off and used a product called Rejuvenate to help restore the original hardwood.  This is the before shot with the ugly carpet:

After I pulled the carpet off and removed the tack strips and staples, this is what the floor looked like:

I was afraid maybe I bit off more than I could chew.  I had no budget for renting a sander, stripping the floors down to bare wood and then refinishing them but it looked like that is what they needed.  I decided I would just have to make it look the best that I could without doing all of that.  I started by using rubbing alcohol and a paint scraper to remove the larger drops of paint on the floor.  For the tiny white specks that pretty much freckled the entire room, I used a super fine grit sandpaper and lightly sanded the entire floor by hand.  It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.  It went fairly quickly and I didn’t have to rub hard, just lightly scuffing the floor.  There were a lot of dull spots and one large black spot that must be a water stain that I couldn’t get out.  I’m not gonna lie, it looked pretty bleak at this point.

When I had finished sanding the floor I used a damp mop and plain water (just enough to get the mop damp) and mopped the floor to pick up all the dust left on the floor from sanding.  I also filled in any scratches and nail holes with wood putty that matched my floor.

I had read about a product I wanted to try called Rejuvenate.  It came in a box with a mop, two mop-heads for cleaning and one for dusting, the floor cleaner and the restorer.  I just sprayed and mopped about a 4 x 4 area at a time until the whole floor was clean.  I allowed the floor to dry completely and then applied the restorer in the same manner and allowed it to dry completely.  There was more than enough floor cleaner and restorer to complete both 10 x 14 bedrooms and still had some left over.

It wasn’t hard, it didn’t take long, it dried quickly and the difference was significant!  The floor is not perfect by any means but it is exactly what I hoped I could accomplish.

It was a couple of weeks before I could work on the second bedroom.  Before I started I wrapped the connection joints on the mop with duct tape because it kept falling apart while I was mopping.  I also forgot to clean the blue fluffy mop-heads when I was done with the first room and discovered I had two ruined mop-heads and I had to purchase two new ones before I could start.  🙄