How To Fix Tongue And Groove Flooring

Repairing hardwood flooring with tongue and groove installation requires expert carpentry skills as well as considerable proficiency with saw and chisel.

How to fix tongue and groove flooring. With older tongue and groove hardwood or even wide plank floors gaps inevitably develop between the boards mostly because the wood shrinks over time as it dries out and loses moisture content. Water logged wood will first swell then shrink as it dries out. The strips of flooring tend to be quite narrow typically 1 to 1 inches wide. Sweep or vacuum the subfloor of all dust and dirt.

Installing tongue and groove floors engineered pre finished or bare wood is among the most popular diy projects and for good reason. How to install tongue and groove flooring in 15 steps. Flooring adhesive or nails depending on whether your boards are glued in or nailed in a heavyweight or weights for placing on the board while the glue is drying note. No matter how well you take care of your flooring it will still need to be repaired from time to time.

Use the chisel to pry the severed tongue from the groove in the end of the adjacent floorboard. Tongue and groove flooring used with its joinery works best for hardwood flooring because it is a great way of creating a smooth seamless customized and often very large end product from using smaller pieces specifically engineered to fit tightly against one another. That s true too with oak carpet an alternative to tongue and groove popular from about 1880 to 1920. Here s a tip for cutting the groove.

Insert the glued tongue of the new plank into the groove on the existing flooring and drop the plank into place. 1 set the circular saw to cut 1 16 inch deeper than the depth of the damaged floorboards. The problem is magnified when the boards were not tightly laid in the first place. Removing damaged planks takes a bit of effort but new tongue and groove flooring installs in a snap.

As long as you keep up with these repairs you won t have very many issues when it comes to actually repairing them. Stick the blade inside the groove and cut off the bottom from the inside or use a table saw. Remove the damaged floorboards using a flat pry bar. Another exacerbating condition is water damage.

When you are working with tongue and groove porch flooring there are things that can go wrong with it. Prep layout installation and finishing tips for tongue and groove floors. This is a hardwood veneer applied over lower grade pine flooring originally meant to be carpeted.