Since the dawn of time, water and wood have never mixed well. That’s why they caution you against using hardwood flooring in your kitchen or bathroom and especially any flooring below grade (i.e. in your basement when you refinish it). Thus, it’s no surprise that it commonly suffers water damage and seems like it cannot be reversed based off of that. If you’ve had any large amount of water mingle with your hardwood flooring, whether it’s related to a flood or something much less serious, your floors will never be the same again. That is, unless you take action immediately.

While Your Hardwood Floors Are Still Wet

Act fast. The sooner you reach to the water, the less time your wood has to react to it. Wood consists of a variety of fibers, but mostly the cellulose fibers, which love to soak up water like sturdy little sponges. In fact, they famously rapidly soak up water and release it rather slowly. Start pulling up water with your shop vacuum as fast as possible. No wood flooring is so well finished that your wood cannot be penetrated by water. Wood flooring has a variety of infiltration points and water is tricky and slippery above all. H2O will slip in through the top layer, between the seams of the floorboards, through small cracks and fissures in the coating and through the baseboards, it can even sneak through the heating registers, just to name a few. Mold and mildew is going to be the first issue to address and your should attempt to address it in a similar fashion that you would tend to water damage in carpet. Start with eliminating the dirt as water on its own cannot simply conjure mold, it needs dirt as well. You’ll need a shop vacuum, a stiff broom, mild detergent, a disinfectant like 409, and a variety of absorbent cloth.