WoodFlooringGuy.com

I am in New Orleans helping to rebuild this great city. I am encountering a lot of gaps in the floors I’m refinishing. I have been experimenting with the whiting, corn starch, linseed oil mix putty- home-made style. It works great, but the application is very difficult. I want to try and find out about ways to apply the mixture loose, and spread it over the whole floor. Can you help?

Is it possible to fill ¼” or less cracks in hardwood floor before sanding and finishing? For anyone who has carpet, linoleum, tile on their hardwood floors and are looking to remove it this is what we did. First we had to take off the very old 20+ year carpet and it’s pad which was falling apart. We first used a ice scraper. We also found a roofing shovel with ridged edges worked well for tough spots. After carpet was removed, we found old linoleum backing under that. So we scrapped some more. Finally went to the local Menards (Hardware center) and asked for some tile/glue remover in the carpet/tile department. We got a gallon which you mix with water, put on a small area at a time, leave on for hour or two, and it worked like a miracle. The linoleum backing and glue scraped right off. After you scrap it off, you use clean water and a rag to rub off any extra glue that is left. You are left with a beautifully clean hardwood floor that is ready to finish. Hope this helps some of you.

I installed pre-finished floors in my kitchen, family room, and entry way about a year and a half ago. They were installed over plywood which was over concrete. There was a moisture barrier put down as well. I have been noticing cracks slowly forming on the wood boards, especially now as we are transitioning from winter into spring. It seems like the cracks start somewhere within the board and somehow get to the surface and bubble up the finish. The cracks go with the grain. In all your answers, you say that the cracks are due to lack of moisture. Could the cracks also be due to too much moisture? I bought a hygrometer and put it on the floor and the humidity in those rooms run between 55% and 65%. I think in your answers, you said the relative humidity in the air should be between 30% and 45%. I’m just not sure if I should add more moisture in the air or take out moisture.

I recently installed laminate flooring throughout my home. Upon completion of the project I realized that I had some gaps around my door frames. After some further investigation I realized that I should have used an undercut saw to take off the bottoms of the door frames so the floor could go underneath. It was too late however as the floor is already down. The gaps range anywhere from less than an inch to around 1.5″ I cut small pieces from my off-cut sections of flooring and glued them into the gaps. Now there are noticeable (to me) seams at all the points where I glued in the “patches”. Any suggestion on what to fill in the seams with to make them less noticeable? I tried some laminate floor crack filler/repair that I bought at a local home improvement store but it doesn’t match the floor very well.

I have floors that are not in bad shape but could use some refilling and a new coat of poly applied. Is it okay to lightly sand the floor, use a putty to refill cracks, and then reapply poly?

Q: We have about 1″ cracks between the boards of our 1850 pine floors, we would like to fill them, but we do not want to sand/refinish the floors (as they had been a few years back). Any suggestions?

Two years ago we had our 30+ year old oak living room floor refinished. The results were excellent! We had the same guys install a new site finished oak floor in another room this year. The new wood was allowed to sit in the room for about 3 weeks this fall to adjust to the temperature and humidity characteristics of the house. A product that they referred to as liquid oak was used during finishing. I understand completely ( from the old floor refinishing ) that during the cooler months, separations will appear between planks and subsequently close with warmer conditions. My concern is that some of the separations in the new floor have a very jagged appearance. Both the finisher and I agree that this resulted from the liquid oak separating alternately on each side of the boards as the wood contracted. In a small ” test ” area, he used a putty type product intended to fill such openings. Would you advise applying this ” putty ” along all of the openings? Do you have any suggestions? Am I better off to see this through for a year of expansion and contraction?

I had prefinished oak flooring laid in my new home three months ago. There are several boards with cracks forming in them. One was so bad they had to replace it. Can you tell me why this is happening? Do I have a poor quality floor or was the installation not done properly? They had tested the humidity and said it was okay.

We moved into our new house last fall. Over the winter our floors started gapping. I contacted the home builder and he talked with the flooring guys and they said it was due to low humidity in the home. I installed a humidifier but by then the cold weather was almost over. I also bought a humidity gauge and it reads over 40% most of the time. The floor guys claimed the gaps would close by themselves but its now July and we have noticed little if any improvement. Our warranty on the home will be over in November so I was wondering how long it normally takes these boards to fix themselves.

I just installed a T & G fir plywood floor in our barn and was looking for suggestions on what type of coating I should use to prevent slivers, seal the screw holes and minor gaps in the flooring. We are using the floor for roller blading, badminton, basketball etc. I was thinking of a rubberized colour coating of some sort?

We just bought an old house with beautiful wood floors and trim. However, the floors are VERY pitted and cracked in large high traffic areas, though fairly solid (i.e., not creaking or moving a lot). We will eventually (5 yrs?) want to have the wood flooring professionally replaced throughout, but the cost is currently prohibitive as we are currently tapped out from buying the home. I want to try wood filling the pits and cracks. I notice that in answering others’ questions you have recommended sawdust and glue mix followed by a latex wood filler?
Why? What about epoxy filler? I have heard that ********** Epoxy Paste available from the US through ************ is a very good product. Also, is it necessary to refinish the entire floor after the repair?

I recently built a house in the Northeast and installed 11 inch wide T&G pine floors. Since then many of the boards have cracked along the board. I am not talking about gaps between boards, although we have many of those some even bigger than 1/4 in. Many of the cracks seem to be more closer to the edges than down the middle, although again a few have cracked down the middle. My contractor says this is normal with such wide boards but I can’t imagine that that is so. The boards were installed in the winter and were face nailed in the summer with no AC on in the house until long after the boards had been laid. Please give me some advice as to what you think the cause is and if this is to be expected.

What is the recommended relative humidity for a house in mixed climate (heat & Air condition)? The house is equipped with a humidifier to regulate the RH during the heating season. The house is equipped with forced air heat but, at night, the owners shut down the forced air and heat with wall radiators with hot water circulated from a gas fired boiler. The *** Pine flooring is shrinking, leaving unsightly cracks between the boards (some, but not all).

I have some uneven gaps around the perimeter of my laminate flooring which I am installing myself. In some places, they are as big as 10 mm. Can I cover them with Quarter rounds?
Also, about the underlayment, should the underlayment run under the baseboards or should it be just under the laminates? Is it OK if some area along the perimeter (say about 5 mm) does not have an underlayment?

I just moved into a new house (built in ~1969), and am preparing to paint the walls and redo the floors. When I removed the lower wall trim along the floor-wall boundary, I found that many of the floor boards appeared to have “shrunk” (one board end was already visible before I removed the trim). Is this really “shrinkage”, or just a bad installation job way back when? And what can I do to “extend” the boards so they terminate well beneath the trim when I finish painting?