One of the key reasons that many people go for polished
wooden floors over carpeting (apart from the sheer beauty of a really well looked
after wooden floor!) is ease of maintenance. In our increasingly busy lives we
have less and less time for housework, but we still want our homes to look like
the ones we see in the pages of interior design magazines. Cutting out the
carpets and replacing them with polished wooden floors can save you both time
and money. But if you have pets there are even more reasons for choosing wooden
floors over carpets.
Putting your time to better use
Nobody wants to spend hours vacuuming every day but it can
become a necessity, especially if you have pets. Dog and cat hair can mat into
the fibres of your carpet, particularly if you go for a longer ‘shag pile’
style (of carpet, not pet!). No matter how thoroughly and vigorously you attack
it with the Hoover,
there will always be hairs that will bury themselves deep into the fabric of
your carpet.
And not only are carpets great for trapping hair and dust
particles – they’re also rather good at trapping odours too. If you have
carpeting throughout your home and pets in the house, you can guarantee that
the smell of your animals will linger, no matter how scrupulously you clean.
Choosing the polished wooden floor option removes all of these problems at a
stroke. Dust particles and hairs don’t have a chance to stick to the surface,
as they are easily brushed or vacuumed up. And wooden floors certainly don’t
trap odours either, so your home smells fresher and cleaner, even if you have
half a dozen damp Cocker Spaniels bouncing around the place!
Unwelcome visitors
Wooden floors also help keep your pets healthier too. Fleas
and mites can use the warmth of a carpet to breed and multiply rapidly,
re-infecting animals that have already been treated with anti-flea products. If
your animals suffer from unwelcome visitors, those fleas and mites can easily
transfer into the carpet. A sure sign that you may have to treat your carpet as
well as your pet for fleas are characteristic small red bites around the ankles
and on the feet of human occupants. Treating a carpet for flea infestations can
be very expensive and may involve the use of harsh chemicals that can result in
further skin complaints or complications later on. Continual exposure to flea
bites can aggravate skin complaints in animals, making life miserable for both
you and your pet.
With a wooden floor, fleas and mites don’t have the chance
to get comfortable, and they can be easily removed without the need for calling
in outside contractors. All it takes is just a simple wash down with a damp
mop, and there’s no hiding place for unwelcome critters! It also reduces the
possibility of your pets becoming re-infested and in turn minimising the risk
of skin reactions to continuous flea bites.
Scratching the surface…
There is one consideration that you may have to think about
if you have dogs in particular, and that’s scratches on the surface of your
wooden floor. While cats can retract their claws and pad about softly, dogs’
claws are permanently extended, and an over-excited Fido galloping around on
your precious wooden floor can quite easily leave some scratch marks. However,
these scratches will be very shallow, and can be easily buffed out. For
slightly deeper scratches, your local floor sanding experts will be able to
recommend products that offer an instant ‘touch up’ remedy to scratches that
should make them practically unnoticeable.
So apart from the occasional scratch (which is an inevitable
part of owning a wooden floor anyway!), polished wooden floors and pets really
are a perfect match.
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