Restoring old oak flooring

bofusmosby

I have an old house that has the thin oak T & G (2" surface) flooring. I am trying to keep as much of the original as possible. Though not on the National Register, It would qualify. I am going to be re-doing the floors in the near future, and there are some problems that I need some input on.

First, living in Florida, all the old houses down here have a certan amount of termite damage. The floors have never been sanded, and I know that there will be some termite damage exposed. What is the best filler, as well as takes a stain good. On the exterior of the house, I have been using "Bondo" auto body filler. Great stuff. I was told that the Bondo will take a stain. Well, I wanted to get some ideas from the pros.

Second, The wood has "cupped" in places. There is plenty of good wood there, so sanding it flat will be no problem. However, because of the age of the wood (shrinkage) when these cupped boards are sanded, it will leave a small space between some of the boards. Is there a special type of filler used for this purpose?

Third, It appears that the oak flooring has a slight seperation from the sub-flooring, causing there to be a "crackling" sound when walked on. Does this have to be corrected before the floor is refinished? I know that I could hammer some finishing nails through the flooring, into the sub-floor, but this would take literally thousands and thousands of nails. The house is about 2300 sq. ft.

Any ideas, or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thnak you

Jim

bofusmosby

Any feedback? I would appreciate it.

Thank you.

Ace Flooring

It sounds like you have several issues. The creaking- usually its the subfloor moving slightly on the nails that are in the floor already so thousand of screws and plugs would be the answer sometime baby powder will help spread with a broom work into the groves. Fillers- never used bondo not once in 20 yrs. basic wood fillers or wood glue and saw dust. some of the small running cracks will fill will sawdust. hope this helps you alittle.

bofusmosby

Thank you Ace Flooring for your response. The creaking, or crackling for the floors does not bother me, so it makes no difference to me it they do make noise. My only concern is wether this would have any effect on the finish when applied? What kind of wood filler do you use between the floor-boards, where there is a bit of a gap between the boards? Also, which type of wood filler have you had the best to take a stain. The old oak flooring has turned a darkish/red color, so I would like to darken up the flooring (stain) just a bit.

Ace Flooring

I have used many wood fillers and none of them blend perfect. Elmers interior works pretty good, usually I will try to use a colored wood filler to blend. Most of the time we will rip boards to fill-in gaps depending on the size of the crack and how long. Say if the old flooring has shrank an 1/2 in or 1in down the length of a room we would cut a board that size to fill in. I have done some as small as 1/8 but if you have a room where you have to do that with every board well you spend a couple of days. normally we won't refinish because we could over lay with a new product to be cost effective. and for finish I would suggest minwax spar urathane. Just make sure you let anything like fillers or stains have plently of time to dry before applying. The only sealer that you may have problems with would be a rigging epoxy finish but high dollar the flexible ones would be just as good for you if you wanted a super strong high gloss finish.

tyler101

Here is a site with some information for the problems you are having. They have filler options on the right side of the page. http://www.rustoleum.com/product.asp...ct_id=76&SBL=1