We were thinking of stripping and painting or varnishing floor boards in one of the bedrooms.
The boards are not tight up together and I would assume need some sort of packing or caulking - anyone got any recommendations?
TIA
Buzby
Not my cup of tea is bare floorboards particulary in the bedroom, reminds me of when i was a lad getting up on a cold wintery morning for school. :-)
String pressed in to grooves.
-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite
Usually strips of newspaper like caulking
Papier mache (paper, wallpaper paste, dash of PVA).
Quicker to re-lay the boards I would think. All those d-i-y fillers look naff to me, not least because it's difficult keeping the residue off the board edges. Somebody should come up with a wood coloured fibre type string that swells when wet. It's amazing how tapered most floorboard gaps are, so no single width solid material ever quite fits.
Cripes. Lift the boards, perhaps cutting some, possible skirting board trouble, very likely board damage, re-use nails or find new cut brads (or settle for non-grip round or oval lost head), cramp up boards, buy new board(s) of the right size/timber to fill gap left, make good damage to skirting, make good damage to lifted & re-laid boards.... quicker than filling the gaps?
Use papier mache, rub off excess with a sander when really dry, no problem (N.B. Don't use much PVA, certainly *not* PVA and powdered timber!).
You can saw off tapered filler strips, lam them in (glue on one side), then plane/sand it down, but it's a PITA.
Heh! The voice of experience??
Thanks - sounds the way to go - will get SWMBO on the job.
================== Consider whether you need to fill the gaps at all.
Unless the gaps are really bad it might be better to do no filling. Use a powerful vacuum cleaner and various scrapers to clean out the gaps before and after sanding and then just varnish. Floors filled with inappropriate gap filler can look really unpleasant.
Cic.
Absolutely. If the floor is to take a stain (Colron wood dye, or some other stain, which you can mix shades of as desired, *not* a coloured coating, which flakes off and is a PITA) then the filler must be capable of taking the stain, too, and, important, end up darker than the stained boards. If the floor is not to be stained, then the filler must be darker than the floor, and not leak colour into the boards.
All duly noted.
I was primarily concerend about small (kids) items getting dropped through the cracks.
I think we'll [1] probably paint the floor
Buzby
[1] Royal 'we', obviously!
I used stain and 3 coats of deck varnish about 8 years ago, still looks smashing. Small son is in there now and there are a lots of gaps. I'm only to happy if small crap falls down them - saves me standing on it :( Seriously tho, we have a rug in the middle of the floor and it isn't a problem at all, I remember wondering the same thing back then. Don't ruin the look of good wood with crappy filler. There is one (varnished over) track mark under the bed where hubby started up hired belt sander, belt broke, sander dug in and took off with hubby attached and hit the wall. How 'we' laughed.
Suzanne
Many will hate me for saying this - but lay laminate!
Dave
This is one of the great unanswerable questions of DIY. No-one knows how to do it with any technique that works, lasts well, and doesn't take an insane amount of effort. I think Good Woodworking mag recently rana poll on favourite methods. Most of the wet-mix mixtures work OK, but shrink after a year or two and open up cracks.
Find the perfect solution to this problem and fame and fortune awaits you!
Hm. Has to be gun applied for speed, flexible to accommodate movement, and not look like a strip of brown plastic. It's the colour nobody can get right. If glue and sawdust taken from the very same wood looks nothing like it, that aspect of the problem obviously isn't easy. Plenty of things are a good match until you put a seal on the wood.
I doubt it...
I wouldnt, papier mache to fill the cracks sounds horrible.
Well, I've only done a few floors like that (two bathrooms, two downstairs rooms).
"Sounds horrible". So, you have no experience *at all*, then.
It actually works very well, unlike PVA/wood dust. Use clean softish paper, lining paper doesn't work even if you put it through the kitchen blender!
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