Flooring advice required

[JohnMBrebner]

I'm going to renovate an old pine floor ie sand & varnish the boards etc. but there are gaps between the boards. I don't want to lift and relay the boards so I plan to fill the gaps (various 3-5mm) I was thinking of pine strips glued in and levelled off but I've heard rumours of cord or rope being inserted into gaps.

Thanks John

[Stuart]

See my anseer to your previous posting above . Stuart :-)

[andrewpreece]

I did this, but it is very tedious. I used natural type hemp and cotton twine, and twizzled together several strands to make packing that would fit the gaps, and then banged them in with a wide-bladed bolster chisel. The difficulty is in getting the packing to fit the varying width gaps between floorboards. I found it necessary to add extra twine in or snip it out of the twizzled packing as I went along to get a snug fit ( didn't want it dropping through ).

I finished off with a natural wood colour acrylic frame sealant, of the squeezy gun variety, made by Dow Corning. I've seen pine strips suggested before, and even heard of successful jobs done that way, but I would not attempt it without the use of a bench-mounted circular saw and probably an electric plane too.

The other method is mixing up sawdust with pva, and using that to fill the gaps, though my experiments showed shrinkage problems. In hindsight, I would only fill gaps in floorboards where there was a draught from below ( i.e. suspended wooden floors on the ground floor, as was the case with my job ). If it was a bedroom floor or elsewhere upstairs I think leaving the gaps would be an OK option.

Andy.