Hardwood floors

I hope that someone will be able to help us out...
We rent out house... the only thing the landlord cares about, which she said over and over again when we moved in, was to not let anything happen to the hardwood floors. They are pine...real wood...put in with the oringal house back in the 70s... She had them all re-done by a pro about a month before we moved in. All prior to then was carpeted....

Well, there are many fine little scratches in the livingroom, near the front door. You can't see them in room lighting, but when the sun is shining down on it, OMG it looks horrible. I was reading up on how to re-touch up all those scrathes on the internet, and it says that I can use steel wool to smooth our the surface to re-polyruethene them...
but my question is, can I only do that area..? We have a throw rug, and it still looks brand new under there. lol. I don't want to do all that work with the steel wool, and then when we move out, whenever that may be, see a difference in the floor from where I fixed to where it was done before we moved in. KWIM???

Or, will I need to do that to the whole room...? Which, in fact is the whole rest of the house since it's all hardwood ..?? I just want to fix that whole area, which really isn't that much, but since the house is so small, it can appear like a large area LOL.

Any advise on this would be AWESOME!!


Oh, and if there are any pros out there... I got another question. When we just got out dog...he scratched the floor... it's only on one plank... and it's not THAT deep..but def NOT a fine scratch... what can I use to fill it in... and then polyruetene over it...? I looked at Lowes and Home Depot a few times, but I'm scared to end up making it look worse. any suggestions would be great...

I can take pictures of it all to help make life more understandable. Lemme know if that will help. Yes, DH and I are going to do it all ourselves...since we are only renting... hiring a pro would jsut be crazy expensive LOL. And we already refinished the other bedroom that wasn't finished when we moved in...so we're getting the hang of hardwood LOL...

Thanks soo much if you got this far...and if you have any suggestions or know anyone that can help us out that would be great. We are planning on fixing it during the summer....maybe sooner...

TIA!!

Re: Hardwood floors

I have not touched up our hardwood yet. we just installed / finished it about 2 months ago. so im not going to be much help. hopefully your landlord realizes, its a floor, people walk on it, there are going to be scratches and marks. But it wouldnt be a bad idea to touch up anyway. hopefully someone here has done it and can have some real tips. the only thing i was thinking is, try not to do it in the summer, the high humidity might effect the finish and make it look different then the rest of the floor. you could run an ac and keep windows closed if you do it in the summer but the smell is really bad. Good luck!

Re: Hardwood floors

It sounds like you just scratched up the poly which is an easy fix. You didn't take chunks out of the floor. Your landlord should know there will be wear and tear on the floors.