Cleaning and/or Restoring Shine to Laminate Floors

[Silver Gaia]

The house we recently bought has wood laminate floors in the bedrooms and family room. What I think happened here is that someone installed the flooring and then just up and left (bank repo) without doing any clean-up. I think this because in one of the pics from the original real estate listing, it looks like the flooring in the family room wasn't completed yet. Then the house sat here with people coming in and out and no one cleaning anything for a couple of years. I don't think whatever cleaning was supposed to be done immediately post-installation was ever done, and then they collected a layer of dust and dirt on top of that problem. The result is that the floors are dull. I want them to shine. I asked at Lowe's and Home Depot what I could do to restore the shine, and of course, all they said was I'd need to replace the floors. Duh, I should've known better than to ask THEM. I'm certainly not going to do that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with them except that they are kinda dull. There's got to be some way to clean them up nicely and make them shine pretty. So... does anyone here know what I can do to accomplish that? Any advice much appreciated. Thanks!

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

1. You are right,there is a way

Rent a electric buffer. Mop and clean first . Use oh,say orange cleaner for wood floors , has a little wax mixed in,you will find it at lowe's or home depot where cleaning supplies are. Use paint thinner to get up any residue left over from the install. (glue ,wood filler what ever.) Than buff it out with a soft pad on the rotor buffer. You can use a wet dry pad on that if there is ground in dirt ,black spots. If you clean the floor with a buffer ,use a soft pad. After the power clean, fan the floor to complete dry and go back over it with the buffer, change pads. That will bring it back.

You can experiment with a car wax buffer ,barrow one or about twenty five bucks to buy one.
It cost about twenty five bucks per day to rent a industrial power buffer.

Try a little of the mim wax high gloss wood floor wax on a closet floor!
Lowe's has a differant name brand that does the same thing. Ok ,so power clean and buff it out.

[eleny]

2. I use Bona X on my laminate floors

I don't think we're supposed to use just anything on them. So if you keep going over them in a small area, you could see if you finally get down through the dirt that's accumulated. You just never want to let the floor sit and be wet for a prolonged length of time.

Good luck!