How to Repair service and Exchange Wood Flooring

Table of Contents

If you’ve ever lived in an aged house—a seriously aged house—then you know the challenge of termites. They can wreak havoc on previous wood flooring. If you have obtain to substitute wooden (in our situation, heart pine boards taken from the attic), you can get those people flooring seeking good as new in virtually no time flat. Being aware of how to repair and/or replace wood flooring in an outdated home can truly preserve you some money. Discover this ability and you can boost your home’s price though serving to it seem amazing in the course of action.


Instruments Required to Restore Wooden Flooring

We recommend obtaining the pursuing applications helpful for this work. It doesn’t acquire a ton to exchange wood flooring, but you will end up producing heaps of cuts. You also have to have to fasten the new items working with a pneumatic or cordless nailer.

1st Action: Get rid of the Old Wood Flooring

Before we can present you how to switch your wood flooring you want to get rid of the challenge regions. We advocate finding an out-of-the-way area to start out. When you get the dangle of matters, you can go back into those people higher-visitors regions to the heart of your living area.

The 1st move in repairing wooden flooring is to dimension up the region to be repaired. You want to take out as significantly of the weakened wood as achievable. Wood putty does not seem fantastic, so really do not consider and help you save a piece that is 80% excellent except you totally really don’t have sufficient substitution material.

We also like to get a birds-eye perspective of the work to be finished. This specifically will help you prioritize when you have many spots that require changing. When you map out the best way to allocate your substitute wood for the mend, you can get began on your very first region.

Earning the 1st Cuts

Starting with a circular noticed, make two rip cuts down the middle of the initially board. You want to rip two strains simply because you want to take out the wood by pulling it horizontally away from the adjacent boards. You don’t want to raise upward as that would injury the tongue of the parts you intend to leave in spot. We want making use of a round saw we can join to a shop vac, thereby minimizing dust.

Ripping floors with a circular saw
You can use a compact 3-inch circular observed or a total-dimensions product. Just be certain it connects to a vacuum or dust extractor so you steer clear of earning a mess inside the residence.

Prying Out the Undesirable Board

After you’ve ripped a couple of channels into the wooden, you can then use a tiny flat bar or pry bar to take away the channel.

Using a pry bar to remove 3/4-inch flooring

At the time the channel is removed you can coax the remaining wooden out and clean the location of the wooden flooring you intend to fix.

removing pine boards - old wood floors

Holding Partial Boards in Area

Keep in intellect that if you don’t want to take out an total board when you mend wooden flooring. You can use an oscillating multi-software to cut a perpendicular line across the wood to kind a break point. Make certain you make the cut correct above the middle of a floor joist. That provides you somewhere to nail the new board:

How to Repair and Replace 0.75-inch Wood Flooring process -4
Building a minimize throughout a flooring joist allows you take out a partial board.

Getting rid of Difficult Boards

You never want to break any tongues off adjacent boards. Need to you operate into problems getting rid of portion of a board, make a wedge-formed notch reduce close to the finish utilizing your oscillating multi-device. This lets you swing the wooden again on alone securely devoid of breaking off the tongue of the adjacent piece of the wood flooring you are not restoring.

How to Repair and Replace 0.75-inch Wood Flooring process -5
When you pull the board toward you, it doesn’t lever throughout the joist and harm the piece up coming to it.

Putting in New Wooden Flooring

Just after the problem of taking away wood, adding in the new piece would seem like child’s enjoy. You do want to measure and slice very thoroughly to minimize the variety of gaps concerning the pieces of wood. We lower the wooden exterior, utilizing a cordless round observed and then brought it in for closing set up. You could also use a miter observed.

How to Repair and Replace 0.75-inch Wood Flooring
Definitely, the new wood lacks the luster of the old wooden. That will come later when you refinish it.

Finish the wooden flooring set up by using a complete nailer to fasten the boards instantly to the joists. Our 1920’s home had no underlayment so we experienced to decide our fastening points thoroughly. Two pops for every joist are adequate, and you are going to want to angle the nails. This holds primarily accurate at the ends to make certain the new wooden stays secure. The final steps will provide to fill in the gaps and compact nail holes.

Ending the Wood

Ending the wood includes a couple of actions. First, you need to use a belt sander to get the wood flush with the adjoining parts. Keep in mind to use a software you can hook up to a store vac to yet again decide up the the vast majority of dust throughout this step:

How to Repair and Replace 0.75-inch Wood Flooring process -6
We took this photo in an place where we purposefully did not use the shop vacuum to demonstrate the change.

Immediately after you’ve sanded the wood flush, use an orbital sander to give the secondary amount of sanding. This lets you realize a sleek surface ideal for your distinct coat complete.

How to Repair and Replace 0.75-inch Wood Flooring process -7

The very last action includes introducing wooden filler (or wood putty to fill in the gaps and give you a sleek, stuffed area, acceptable to stain or clear coat. You want to use a robust wooden filler that allows for a purely natural blend with the finished wooden. Approach on sanding the wood at the time again immediately after making use of the putty to get almost everything nice and sleek and eliminate any more filler from the surface.

Applying wood putty or wood filler

Following you implement the last coat of finish you need to barely recognize the place you fixed and replaced the wood.


finished heart pine boards

The Remaining Word

It is a large amount of function mastering how to maintenance and change wooden flooring. We experience the finish final result often would make up for the do the job. When you determine that a floor is salvageable and only in need to have of location repair service, it is a entire good deal extra effective and realistic to exchange compact areas than to re-lay an whole flooring. We hope this served you know a minor far more about how to mend wooden floors. At the very minimum, we hope it conjures up you to get on your have wooden flooring undertaking.