Laura R. wrote:


I thought so, too, until I started thinking about it some more. With
finished wood floors, the wood isn't necessarily "sealed" in that the
gaps between the planks would almost certainly allow steam to
penetrate. Somebody would have to glob polyurethane onto a regular
wood floor to really "seal" it, which is a really dumb thing to do if
one doesn't want broken legs. :-) Thus, I figured that by "sealed",
they might mean laminate-type wood flooring. I could, of course, be
wrong. :-)

Well, my husband has always told me that pretty much all wooden floors have
been sealed with something--otherwise they are unfinished wood, which would not
hold up very well. Usually hardwood floors are sealed with polyurethane, but
unless you have a really stupid installer like the janitor at one of the
apartments we used to rent, they are not going to glop on such a thick coat
that you would have a slick surface (and even that one was not so much slick as
just ugly because he had so many air bubbles in it.) They can also be sealed
using penetrating sealants like acrylics or oils. If you want to do a search,
there are a couple ways you can test your floor (in an inconspicuous area) to
see what kind of sealer you have.
The reason this subject came up with us is that I didn't believe at first that
our floors are sealed (in our current house) because they didn't appear to have
a layer of polyurethane.