Sanding floorbaord

[Reestit Mutton]

What about just sanding and varnishing the edges and then carpetting along the center of the hall only to expose the varnished edges - you'd get the best of both worlds then.

RM

[Matthew Augier (dps)]

Our hall carpet is looking really tatty now, but underneath is quite a nice set of floorboards we (well SWMBO) to renovate. However as these are on the ground floor you can feel the draft between them and I'm a tad worried that we will lose a lot of heat through here (well cold air coming in) and that they will feel very cold. I would expect NOT to plug the gaps as that would impair the woods expansion/compression unless there is something that will contract and expand with it? Advice please, or just a new carpet/laminate...

Mat

[Michael Mcneil]

If you can get under the floor you can staple hardboard or thin ply to them. If you can't, can you take say, every fourth or fifth board up and work on them from there? Perhaps applying a foam to them?

[Witchy]

We'll be doing our bathroom floor this weekend, and the plan is to take the resulting sawdust, mix it into some watery PVA and brush it into the gaps between the boards. Can't remember where the hell we saw that tip in the first place though!

Should seal it up nicely. We hope.

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs

[RichardS]

carpet/laminate...

Be very careful when you do that and test it with your chosen finish first.

You can end up with a very blotchy effect where the finish is not absorbed by the wood where glue overspill has occurred.

cheers Richard

-- Richard Sampson

email me at richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk

[jerrybuilt]

Draft??

If you can lift the boards, then insulate under with Jablite on battens or put building paper over joists before re-laying boards. If not, just fill between the boards with papier mache (made with wallpaper paste + paper). Sand and stain/whatever.

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[jerrybuilt]

Here, I should think. However, I strongly suggest you don't do that.

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[Witchy]

This is true, thanks for reminding me!

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs

[Andrew Mawson]

You need to apply your sawdust & pva paste and let it harden before sanding - that way any overspill is sanded off and the filler is brought down to level. Be aware that sawdust and pva make for a very hard lump - you need to get it pretty smooth to avoid tearing the machine sanding sheets unnecessarily.

Andrew Mawson

[mark]

I've done this. Firstly, don't water down the PVA...this makes the resulting paste very dark and it takes ages to dry. Secondly, you may want to consider sanding, varnishing then filling the gaps to avoid the glue stains etc etc. Or you can fill the gaps with clear silicone sealant whick also looks OK, unless your face is 2" form the floor....which if it is, the last of your worries is probably the finish of your floorboards ;-)

[andrewpreece]

I used a Dow Corning acrylic sealant ( natural wood colour ). It worked fine and I believe is superior to sawdust and pva - the pva gave a darker-than-natural look to the sawdust so it's not such a great colour match, and it suffered slight shrinkage on drying. Sawdust and wallpaper paste gave a perfect colour match but was brittle and also suffered shrinkage. I'd go with the acrylic sealant every time. Had to visit a decent builders' merchant to find it though.

Andy

[Witchy]

As it happens I've just finished with the edger and there aren't many gaps at all, so we'll probably just leave them as they are. They'll fill up with stuff over the years anyway :)

I had the usual problem of bowed boards to contend with too, which was a bit of a bummer. I know I've said it before but THIS is the last floor I'm doing!

Honest..

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs

[Witchy]

Smart, I'll bear that in mind - I ended up lobbing everything in the same rubble bag anyway, so the sawdust is pretty much useless now!

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs