Floor Strip & Wax Services in Miami

When a Floor Needs a Full Strip

Vinyl composition tile is cheap, tough and everywhere: schools, clinics, retail back rooms, condo service corridors. On its own it's porous and dull. What makes it look good is the finish on top, a layer of acrylic polymer that takes the scuffs so the tile doesn't.

That finish wears. Grit from the parking lot works into it, mop water leaves residue, and every coat added over a dirty floor seals the dirt in. After enough of that, the floor turns amber along the walls and gray in the walkways, and no amount of mopping changes it. Scrubbing the surface won't help either, because the dirt is inside the finish.

Stripping takes all of it off. We chemically break down the old coats, scrub them loose, pick up the slurry and rinse the tile clean, then build a new finish from scratch. A properly stripped and refinished floor looks close to new and is far easier to keep clean for the next year or more.

What Our Strip & Wax Service Includes

Floors We Strip and Refinish

Most of our strip and wax work is on resilient flooring:

• VCT. The most common commercial tile in South Florida and the floor this process was made for.
• Sheet vinyl. Common in exam rooms, labs and food service areas.
• New VCT. Fresh tile still has a factory coating that has to come off before it will hold a sealer and finish.
• Linoleum. Takes a gentler stripper, because standard high-pH strippers can damage it.
• Sealed concrete. Where a topical finish is used to protect a warehouse or showroom slab.

Strip and Wax vs. Scrub and Recoat

Not every dull floor needs a strip. If the finish is still bonded to the tile and the dirt is mostly on top, a scrub and recoat gets most of the look back in a fraction of the time. We scrub with a less aggressive pad, remove the soiled top layer and lay down two or three new coats.

A full strip makes sense when the finish is yellowed, peeling, powdering or so thick it has started to look cloudy. It also makes sense when a floor has been recoated so many times that the dirt is now part of the build-up. During the walkthrough we usually scrub a small test area so you can see which one your floor needs.

How Long the Shine Lasts

That depends more on what happens after we leave than on the job itself. A refinished floor in a quiet office can go a year or longer before it needs another strip. A school cafeteria might need it every summer. Entrance mats help more than most people expect, since most of the grit that wears down finish comes in on shoes.

Daily dust mopping, a neutral floor cleaner instead of an all-purpose degreaser and periodic burnishing will stretch the time between strips. Our floor polishing and burnishing service is built for exactly that, and regular machine scrubbing keeps soil from building up in the first place.

Our Strip & Wax Process

Before the job, we walk the floor with you, confirm the type of tile and test how the old finish reacts to stripper. Older buildings sometimes have layers of different products that don't all come off the same way. We also agree on which areas get done on which night, how furniture will be handled and when the space has to reopen.

On the night of the job, the area is closed off and signed. Stripper goes down in workable sections, dwells, gets scrubbed and is picked up with a wet vacuum or auto-scrubber before it can dry back onto the floor. Then we rinse, check that the floor is neutral and wait. Finish laid over a damp floor clouds and peels, so we don't rush this part.

Once the tile is fully dry, we apply sealer where it's needed and then thin coats of finish with a clean flat mop. Four or five thin coats wear far better than two heavy ones. Light foot traffic is usually fine a few hours after the last coat. Carts and furniture should wait longer, and we'll give you a time based on the product and the humidity that night.