Best products and tools to clean wood?

[totalfandango]

What would be the best products to shine up wooden wall panelling, doors and skirting in an old house?

Also, to remove flecks of paint from wooden floorboards and shine them up/ help conceal scratches etc? What kind of mop or similar type thing would you use for this?

An suggestions gratefully received.

is it bare wood, or is it varnished/pained/waxed/oiled?

Mainly varnished I think, apart from maybe some of the wood panels on the walls. We are thinking they probably need waxed/oiled. Sorry to be so vague, its not my home.

Floors are varnished, but a lot of dents and scratches.

if the dirt is on the varnish, you can try cleaning it with household cleaner, if embedded, sand lightly until the dirt has all gone and give another coat.

On bare wood, you can scrub it, and the surface will go white. You can then sand off the white surface before recoating. You can use Colron or similar woo dye to even up the colour before applying a matt varnish or your treatment of choice.

Bare wood is absorbent so will hold dirt, fingermarks, grease etc.

If it is bare wood that just has a few fingermarks on it, you can rub them with white spirit on a rag (with plastic, not rubber gloves) and if marks remain, use fine sandpaper. The colour will be patchy, because bare wood changes colour on exposure to air and sunlight.

p.s.

if you just want to put a shine on top of the dirt, you can use a wax polish.

the wax will have to be stripped off before it is cleaned or re-varnished though.

Button polish or instant French polish (Colron) makes a really good finish once you have cleaned it using PigletJohn's advice.

Little flecks of paint can be removed from the floor if you use a stanley blade sideways as a scraper.

Thanks ladies, does that basicaly mean that in order to clean varnished wood you then have to revarnish it? Or am I being thick?

ladies????

you only need to revarnish it if the dirt was so deeply engrained that you had to sand the surface off. If the dirt washes off, no need to revarnish.

if it was bare, untreated, unvarnished wood then you will probably have to sand it because the bare wood is absorbent and the dirt will have gone into it. If you leave it untreated then it will soon get dirty again. it is easier to wash, sponge or scrub a surface that has been treated, especially if varnished as that is harder than a wax or oil finish.