Floor Strip & Wax

We take a worn hard floor back to bare tile and build a new protective coating on it, so the floor stops going gray in the traffic lanes. Tile, vinyl plank, terrazzo, polished concrete and ceramic each need something different — and some of them should never be waxed at all.

What it is

"Strip and wax" is the trade's name for taking a hard floor back to bare tile and building a new coating on it. The "wax" has not been wax for decades; it is a clear liquid finish that dries into a hard, protective layer. That layer is meant to be the thing that wears out. Dirt, grit, chair casters and salt grind away at the finish instead of the floor underneath, and when the finish is worn through, you strip it off and lay a new one.

Done properly, a tile floor from the 1990s can look new for another twenty years. Left alone, it goes gray where people walk, the tile itself gets scratched, and no amount of mopping brings it back — at that point the floor has to be replaced rather than refinished, which is a different order of money.

The crews are floor crews, not the nightly janitorial crew with a borrowed machine, and the equipment is ours.

Not every hard floor should be waxed, and part of the job is saying so. Vinyl plank, polished concrete and ceramic tile are all damaged or clouded by a finish that does not belong on them. "We'll just wax it" is how a lot of good floors get ruined. Find your floor below and we will tell you what it actually needs — including, often, less than you are paying for now.

What's included

A full strip and refinish — the four-step job

• Furniture moved and protected; baseboards and door frames taped where finish would mark them
• Floor dust-mopped, then stripper applied and left to soak — the step everybody rushes and shouldn't
• Old finish scrubbed off with a low-speed machine; corners and edges done by hand
• The slurry vacuumed up, floor rinsed, then a second rinse that neutralizes the stripper — miss this and the new finish will not stick
• Floor fully dry, then finish laid in thin coats, usually four to six, each one dried before the next; extra coats where people walk most
• Polished after it cures for the hard shine, and the furniture put back exactly where it was

Scrub and recoat — the maintenance job between strips

• Floor deep-scrubbed with a machine and a cleaner that lifts soil without taking the finish off
• Two fresh coats over the existing finish, putting the gloss and the thickness back
• Takes a third of the time of a strip, costs a fraction, and pushes the next strip back by a season or more

Polishing program, weekly to monthly

• A high-speed machine warms and re-flows the top of the finish, which is what produces the wet-look shine
• Usually folded into nightly janitorial for floors the public sees, so it costs nothing extra in crew visits

How often it's really needed — pick your floor

Vinyl composition tile — the 12-inch squares in schools, clinics and older offices. It is porous and needs a finish; bare tile stains and scuffs permanently. This is the classic strip-and-wax floor.

Verdict: strip once a year, recoat twice, polish on the nightly schedule. Stripping quarterly wears the tile and wastes money.

Luxury vinyl tile and plank — the wood-look and stone-look floors in newer offices, dealerships and clinics. Most of it comes from the factory with a tough surface layer already on it and is not designed to be waxed. Finish laid on top peels, yellows, and voids some warranties.

Verdict: if someone quotes you a strip-and-wax on vinyl plank, ask them why. The manufacturer's care sheet is the rule and we follow it.

Terrazzo — marble or glass chips set in cement, ground flat. Common in older public buildings, courthouses and campuses. It can be sealed and finished like vinyl tile, or ground and polished to a bare shine that never needs a finish again.

Verdict: if you are stripping terrazzo every year, ask us about polishing it once instead.

Sealed or polished concrete — warehouses, hangars, showrooms, breweries, newer retail. Polished concrete has been ground hard and smooth and needs no finish; sealed concrete has a coating on top that wears through where people walk.

Verdict: mostly a scrubbing and polishing floor. Strip-and-wax is the wrong service here and we will say so.

Ceramic and porcelain tile — restrooms, entries, restaurant kitchens, lobbies. The tile itself needs no finish. The grout is the problem, because it is porous and holds soil and odor.

Verdict: no strip, no wax. A tile-and-grout program, priced as such.

Why "strip it quarterly" is usually wrong

Every strip takes a little of the tile with it. Stripper is aggressive by design, and a floor stripped four times a year is being sanded, slowly, by chemistry. The finish is supposed to be the layer that wears out, so the goal is to keep the finish healthy rather than to keep removing it. A scrub-and-recoat every few months puts thickness back without taking anything off, and a polishing program keeps the shine between. The result is a floor that gets one strip a year, or one every two, looks better all year, and costs less. We would rather sell you the program than the strip.

What to expect

• Walkthrough. We identify the floor — it is not always what the building thinks it is — measure the square footage, check for lifting tiles, damp and old finish build-up, and look at what the traffic actually does to it.
• Written scope and proposal. Which areas, which process, how many coats, and a date that fits your building: a school break, a weekend, an overnight. Priced per job or as a yearly program.
• The job. A floor crew with its own equipment. Areas closed off and signed; furniture moved and returned; finish cured before anybody walks on it. A dealership showroom stripped Saturday night opens Monday.
• Ongoing. The polishing and recoat schedule written into your nightly scope, and a supervisor checking the floor at inspection, so the next strip is planned rather than an emergency.