Repairing Hardwood Floors

There are very few things more disheartening than having a piece of your hardwood floor damaged. The most likely culprit is water, either from a leaky window that went unnoticed or from a leak below a sink cabinet that seeps underneath the planking. If the area was tile you could chip out the offending pieces and replace them but hardwood is interlocking pieces and difficult to take out.

The first advice is to get a professional to repair a hardwood floor. If you can’t get anyone who knows how to do this then be prepared for a painstaking process. Each plank has either a tongue or groove on each side so traditional prying will only lift and maybe damage the area (If you are strong enough!). But the plank will not come out this way.

1.  Cut the Plank: The best way to get the plank out is to take a circular saw and cut two parallel grooves down the length. Be careful not to oversaw the plank and put a cut in the good planks and set the blade to less than 3/4″ so you won’t cut the floor below.

2.  Sideways: With a pry bar pull the two edge pieces to the center. You may have to do some wiggling because of the long staples. Remember to put a pad or soft wood against the good flooring or you’ll put dents in it. Also, be careful not to break the grooves off the adjacent good pieces.

3.  Installing the New Piece: Hopefully, you have a spare piece from the original installation. If not you will have to find an unfinished piece that you can stain to look like the floor. Get two or three: One for to practice the staining and two in case you mess one up.

Because you can’t get another piece directly in the hole the bottom half of the groove side will have to be cut out. Also, cut of the tongue on the short side. This won’t be necessary because you will have to cut the length anyway so you might as well cut off the tongue end. The piece should just snug in because you’ve taken away the lower obstacles.

4.  Fastening: The nails should be finishing ones with small ends. if you can’t find a drill bit small enough use on of the these as a drill. It will take a bit of pressure but they will go through. But use a bit if you can. Make two holes on each end and then two to three in the plank. Try to choose places that will not show. Now glue all sides of the wood and the two tongues left in the hole and press in. Put in your finishing nails and use a punch to drive them just below the surface. Take some colored wood filler and match the piece.

5.  Stain: If the piece is unfinished you will have to stain it to match. Take the spare piece to the paint shop and get them to help you match it. Stain the installed piece. To finish it off buy a small can of urethane that matches the texture. Usually three coats will do. Before finishing, mask off the surrounding pieces so you won’t get spillage on them.

Hardwood Floor Fillers

In almost every part of the country you will get expansion and contraction in a hardwood floor. Even in areas that are not dry the temperature in the home or home heating unit may cause the floor planks to contract. This is especially true in a room where the fireplace is being used often.

Before a hardwood floor is put down the flooring installer will usually “season” planks in the room for up to two weeks. In other words her or she will have the cartons delivered to the home well before the job will have be done. Then the boxes will be opened so that the planks will drink in the humidity of the room before the installation takes place. However, even with this process the floor planks can shrink and small cracks can appear. These can allow moisture to degrade the planks and should be filled.

As with most paints and sealers there is now a water-based wood filler product to repair cracks between the planks. These are especially good for the installer who is putting down unfinished flooring or for the finishers. The reason for this that, unlike the old solvent-based fillers, this water-based product will adapt to the seasonal changes. it will not shrink, crack or fall out. In addition it will accept stains.

For finished or prefinished floors the crack are already there. Now there has to be a filler that can move with the wood, expand and contract without pushing out of the crack. Alcohol or solvent-based fillers dry hard and so are not designed for this. It also has to be colored because you don’t want to be sanding and refinishing a sliver of your floor. It will rarely match and the damaged places are rarely out of sight.

Silicone-based fillers will expand and contract with the flooring planks during the changes in humidity. Since these products come in a tube you can adjust the tip for a very fine bead. And they are colored, up to a dozen standard wood colors including black and white. In addition they can be used for wood floor damages like holes and dents.

Fixing Floor Squeaks

A noisy floor is one of the most annoying sounds in a house outside of a constantly dripping faucet. You always know when you enter a room the a certain area of the floor will squeak and there’s nothing you can do about it. Well, you can do something about it but it may be a prolonged process.

A squeak is caused by movement but the action may be happening for a number of reasons: a loose nail, boards rubbing together, subfloor movement. In new buildings many contractors use construction glue to eliminate this potential problem because everyone knows that after time things come loose.

Flooring Squeaks

Start out by standing near the spot where the noise occurs and getting someone to walk over it. Get lower to the floor on the next pass and even put your ear to the floor. If the noise is in the finished flooring there may be a chance that you can lubricate it with dry graphite. Shake some of this compound into the floor space and then walk up and down on the floor for a few minutes to let the powder get into the cracks. With luck you may eliminate the creaking sound . Now vacuum up the residual.

Delving into the SubFlooring

Underneath: Sometimes the noise is deeper and you need to drive in a long screw, or screws, to quiet the floor. This is a problem with hardwood floors and tile but if you have a basement, and can up into the rafters, this job will be easier. If this is the case then get the same person to walk on the floor while you listen underneath. Isolate the exact area of the noise and drill diagonal holes through the top of the joist but be careful not to go into the subfloor or the screw won’t hold. What you are going to do is put a screw up into the subfloor thereby pulling the subfloor down. If this doesn’t stop the noise you might try tapping in a wedged shim between the joist and the subfloor. If either of these methods stop the noise make sure you get some glue up int eh spaces to prevent a repeat.

From Above: Taking up carpet and other flooring to the bare subfloor will isolate the problem quicker. When you find the spot use a stud finder to pinpoint the joist. One of the best fasteners is a spiral nail because you can drive them down and they hold fast. Screws will work too. Drill holes smaller than the diameter of the fasteners but stop short of putting them into the joist. When the fasteners are put int this should stop the noise.

Laminate floors and carpet can be taken up and replaced afterward. If you are handy you can try this with a hardwood floor. The heads can be counter-sunk and then filled with a colored wood-filler.

The Squeaky Floor

There are annoying sounds that your house emits when things are quite right. The smoke alarm might go off when you are boiling water and one or more faucets may drip. But the one that can grow to be the most frustrating is a squeaking floor.

A squeak means that something in the floor is moving and two materials are rubbing together. These include:

• Edges of the subflooring moving against one another.
• Nails that have come loose.
• Shrinking wood that leaves gaps.
• Tongue and groove boards that have shrunk and do not fit tight.

Many floors cannot be accessed from underneath. But for those that can place a stepladder under the squeak and get someone to walk over it. You should be able to isolate the area. Sometimes just a small shim tapped in between the floorboards and the joist can stop this. If it does just put some carpenter’s glue around the shim to stop it from working its way out. If you can’t get below, or if the shim doesn’t do it, then isolate the squeak from the floor itself.

If it’s under the carpet you may have to pull up the carpet to work on it. However, in some cases a nail can do the trick. Using a stud finder find the solid joist beneath the carpet. Then take a 2 – 2 1/2″ small head nail and drive it down where the joist was located but leave a half inch. Now test the floor. If the squeak stops or decreases then take a punch and drive the nail down through the carpet. The nail should go right through the backing without harming the carpet. Test it again. If it stops put two more nails in.

For hardwood floor sometimes shaking some talcum powder in the cracks will work. It may take a few days for it to get into all the cracks but this may take the noise away as it takes the friction off the moving wood. Powdered graphite works too but it is messy. If it still squeaks then drill a hole through the floor where the joist is located. Try to get the holed between the planks so that it goes through the tongue and, also, will not be as noticeable. Once you have drilled through the hardwood use a longer bit to get into the joist about 3″. Now screw in a 3″ countersink wood screw and “bury” the head. Afterwards you can put wood filler in the hole and smooth it out. When it dries lightly sand it and, is needed, apply a stain to match the wood. Next take a tiny modeling brush and dab urethane on the wood filler and blend this in with the finished hardwood.

Tile flooring is trickier. You have to take out the tile and replace it. For best results grind out the grout and then take a mason’s chisel and lightly tap around the tile square. Keep doing this until the mastic breaks loose. This take patience and, depending on the strength of the mastic, it could come out in one piece. Hopefully you have extra tile available in case you break any of the pieces.

For a better sizing up of a squeak that won’t go away contact a handyman.