Hi
I have sanded my living room floor. There are now some rather draughty spaces between floorboards. Please don't mention glue and sawdust or folded pieces of plastic strips. I have tried those Grrrr!
Any ideas?
Harry
Harry,
Yes, but one you probably won't want to do.
The only real cure is to lift and relay the floor using the old boards "and floor cramps to get things really 'squashed up'" and put in any new boards next to the walls - and if the boards are *NOT* tongued and grooved, then you will be wasting your time doing that.
Or you could try laying some of the 'engineered' wood floors that are available now on top of the existing board and at right angles to them.
Sorry about that - but as wood is a 'living' thing - it's always difficult (if not impossible) to stop movement in it.
Cash
The professional fix is to cut wooden fillets to fill the gaps and then glue them on one side only to allow for natural movement of the boards but this needs high level planer/router skills to get a good enough fit to exclude most of the draughts. A quicker and easier method is to use Gap Master Flooring Filler, a silicone free mastic which is supplied in cartridges in various wood shades but its life expectancy depends on the amount of movement between boards, and there is always some movement. Presumably this are plain boards so are without the benefit of tongues and grooves which will provide some support for mastic and stop it from falling through?
If it is possible to get under the floor, it might be a good idea to put insulation between the joists, and keep that in place with wooden strips every few inches.
I would also recommend the timber 'slips' This is what I plan to do with my floor, you could cut them off a board of similar thickness. If you use a Skill saw and angle the blade slightly your slips will be slightly wedge shaped in cross section. You will be able to tap them into the gaps tightly and then use a sharp plane to carefully take off any protruding high spots.
AJ
On boats we would use a product called Sikaflex, a flexible mastic type filler that is tough and weatherproof, not that you'll have a lot of weather in your living room. I can't say for sure it'll be suitable but it's worth considering. TonyB
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