Restoring parquet flooring

[gareth.marlow]

We discovered on moving in to our house a month or so ago, that under a vile red carpet in the living room was some beautiful parquet flooring, presumably dating from when the house was built in 1956. We've now finished painting the ceiling and walls and have lifted the carpet to look at the parquetry more closely.

Clearly, previous owners have shown little regard for it as it has numerous areas of misted paint spattering and others with larger smears and stains of paint. In a few other places, the bitumen layer that the floor stands on has seemed through the gaps in the wood blocks. I have put some photos of this on my website here:

areas look fine - a little dull through having been under underlay for at least 20 years, but nothing that a good clean won't sort out. But we're wondering what the best way of restoring the paint-spattered areas will be - scraping? sanding? something chemical? Any advice gratefully received.

Gareth

[Andy Hall]

What a shame to cover floors like these with carpet. I expect that they had carpet in the bathroom as well.

You may well need to sand it to address some of the dings and scratches ultimately (or treat them as patina), but that needs to be carefully considered because the wood can often be quite thin. A typical problem on floors like these was the impact of stiletto heels and little indendations.

I would address the bitumen issue first with scraping and perhaps a suitable solvent to avoid it being spread around the surface during subsequent operations.

Following that, a chemical paint stripper to remove old paint, varnish and so forth.

Finally a light sanding.

If you want to address scratches and dings in the surface at this stage you can try an iron and a wet cloth. This causes the wood fibres to swell and may take most or all of a dent out. It usually won't do anything about missing chunks of wood.

For a finish, I quite like oil and wax mixture for a wooden floor because I don't like glossy varnishes. It does mean having some kind of floor polisher ideally though.

I think it would be well worth the effort.

[The Medway Handyman]

It looks basically sound. To remove the paint, bitumen and any old wax polish use wire wool and white spirit with plenty of elbow grease!

A light sanding will then even out the colour, but remember parquet can be quite thin. I'd use a random orbit sander rather than a belt sander.

Check out

for floor finishes.

[Roger]

The message from [e-mail] contains these words:

ISTR that the miniature parquet is rather thin so sanding is probably best avoided if at all possible. My parents had a house built in about

1954 that had that sort of flooring everywhere downstairs apart from the kitchen. Even when it was newish there was always the odd piece that was loose so you should be able to find one that will lift to check the thickness.

It was said at the time that there was such a severe shortage of good timber that new houses couldn't have suspended wood floors on the ground floor so if you wanted a wood floor you had to make do with parquet over solid concrete.

[gareth.marlow]

That's uncanny. Are you stalking me? :)

Ok. That makes sense.

Nitro-mors, or something less aggressive? I've had a suggestion of meths for the emulsion and turps/white spirit for the gloss.

This is the ironic thing: it's been protected by carpet for at least 20 years so it's just the paint. The rest is in great nick.

Ok, thanks for that. I prefer a more matt finish too.

We'd talked about laying some kind of stripwood flooring on the ground floor when our offer on the house was accepted - you can't imagine how pleased we were when the previous owner mentioned "that there might be parquet under the carpet". I've made a little start already and it's looking *so* good.

Thanks again, Gareth

[gareth.marlow]

I gave it a go with white spirit and a large plastic abrasive pad (like a large pan scourer) and it's coming up a treat. You're not wrong about the elbow grease, though :)

Great - thanks.

Gareth

[gareth.marlow]

Loose pieces appear to be about 8mm thick. I'm more worried about loosening too much of it if I'm aggressive with the sanding - hence doing it by hand.

You learn something every day!

Thanks, Gareth

[Andy Hall]

Well it was either going to be that or laminate flooring.

I would start with the less agressive first, but realistically it will probably end up being Nitromors.

Fine sanding might be another way. You could try that because in most of the photos the paint doesn't look too bad.

[HLAH]

I would lightly sand it down to clean wood and then finish with traditional Bourne Seal. Maintain with a water based acrylic polish. They (ICI or whoever owned the brand) used to make a Bourne Seal branded one but there seems no trace of it now. There must be an equivalent out there.

H

[Matty F]

I laid a floor like that, about 40 years ago. The pieces of wood were about 1/4 inch thick, which should allow a fair bit of sanding using an orbital sander. Maybe you could lift up a piece to check. The ones in picture 5 look as if they may be loose.

[meow2222]

If it were mine I'd try to avoid sanding where possible, as this would do its appearance no favours, as well as the possibility of pulling pieces up. Last time I did a wood floor it was a mess but almost all came good just from thorough cleaning. Sanding of wood floors is much overused imho.

NT

[Matthew]

Hi Gareth,

We moved into an early 70's house last year. It also has original Parquet flooring. It was in a similar condition to yours. We had a quote from a company that specialised in floor restoration and they charged =A330 a square/m. It would have worked out to about =A32K!

We hired a floor sander and used the finest 2 paper grades along with using a belt sander for the edges. The teak turned a very light tan colour It looked rubbish. We were concerened....

However... once the floor varnish was added, Ronseal diamond hard gloss. The results were simply stunning! A deep colour, beautiful grain. A number of people have commented how nice our floor is. Well worth it. (BTW to buy new parquet and get it fitted would have cost us thousands.) Total cost about =A3150 plus 3 days hard graft and lots of orange dust! Probably the most cost effective DIY we have ever undertaken but you have to be prepared for dust, white paper suit time! I will upload some photos for you to look at. If you want any more info let me know.

Matthew

[The Medway Handyman]

Cuprinol. Still called Bourne Seal. Or Original Bourne Seal.

Techniocally known as an oleo resinous seal. Great stuff, actually penetrates the surface rather than forming a coating on top, so its great for wood floors that are splintering etc.

[The Medway Handyman]

Wire wool is a lot better!

[HLAH]

No no, you misunderstand, I meant that they used to do a water based polish that was suitable as a maintenance polish after you had finished with the Bourne Seal.

Now I come to think of it was called "Bourne Shine", haven't seen it anywhere for a while so I use Johnson's Klear Floor Shine as a cheap easy to source alternative, looks just as good but maybe not as wear resisting.

It's lovely in that the colour and character of the wood continue to develop year on year. Very very nice.

H

[Roger]

The message from "The Medway Handyman" contains these words:

Talking of Bourne Seal what happened to Joe Stahlin (sp). I had a brief period of absence from this ng a year or 3 back and when I returned he was gone? (Too large a volume of traffic and I hadn't confine Dribble to my killfile).

[Andy Hall]

But it is shiny I believe ........

[Andy Dingley]

Not on oak blocks though. Steel residues left in oak will give rise to iron staining.

[The Medway Handyman]

Sorry! Most water pased emulsion polishes are much the same, depends on the solids content.

ISTR that Klear is only about 15% solids. Really good stuff is 25%.

[The Medway Handyman]

Hmmm. Not especially, more of a sheen.