Major Cracks in Hardwood Floors
We have major cracks in our original hardwood floors (see attached pic). I have been doing some light research and it seems that it can be fixed with some sort of filler. Anyone have experience in doing this, and if so what type of products did you use? Did you have a professional do it or DIY? Did you have to do anything after sanding the small area? Does the filler match or you need to stain to match the existing wood? It seems hard to believe that filler would do the trick, but what do I know! Would really love to keep original pine (I think) floors.

mulligatani
in Flooring 10 years and 10 months ago
16
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trudylou | 10 years and 10 months ago
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We just had our similar floors refinished. The contractor replaced a few lengths of board where the holes were bad with with salvaged wood that was very similar. If you look, you can see which sections were replaced but if you aren’t looking, you’d never notice.

BobMarvin | 10 years and 10 months ago
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BTW, seeing Allan S’s floors makes me want to re-think eventually covering my subflooring. Maybe my old foor CAN be refinished once more.

BobMarvin | 10 years and 10 months ago
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Allan S, Your floors look great. I hope the home-made wood filler lasts, but I wouldn’t count on it. However your floors will still look good, even if the filler fails.

allans | 10 years and 10 months ago
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I had similar situation with original brownstone subfloors, Carlos Wood Floors (carloswoodfloors@gmail.com) used remnants of sawdust of the same floors after he screened them. Then he took the sawdust and mixed it with a wood filler cement (looked like a liquid). The result was pretty amazing – this method was not perfect but definitely agree with Cate that these subfloors “look beautiful even with lots of imperfections” or with a rustic “lived-in” look. I’m attaching pictures here to show the results. Carlos Wood Floors definitely know what they are doing with Brownstone wood floors! Best, Allan S.

thetinkerswagon | 10 years and 10 months ago
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dry the area out with dehumidifier so they contract a bit. then clean up the really bad edges with a plunge saw and straight edge and remove any tongues. make strips of wood which fit snug (you need a table saw) and put some gap filling epoxy on them (with wood flour in it and maybe some tint to color it like the rest of the floor) and tap the strips into the gaps. it will not all be perfect but if you get most of it ok, you can use some of the thickened epoxy to fill the real uneven runs that the wood strips would not fill properly. sand it off when dry. I would probably run a chisel along the strips to cut it first. touch up the spots with tinted poly. then screen the entire floor and poly. be mindful that the wood was meant to move, so I would not fill everyone of these in this manner. also, do not over dry the wood or it may expand and pop later. Steve

bkk | 10 years and 10 months ago
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I quintuple the sentiment of not using filler, it does not last, especially on subfloor. I also tried rope in my self-amusing journey to “fix” my floor, it looks silly, don’t do it. The gaps all need to be uniform across the entire span of the floor to get any kind of asthetic benefit. If I am seeing your photo correctly, it looks like the previous floor finisher tried to fill the gap with cork, this works OK for smaller fills, but a well placed stilleto heel and that sucker is gone into the abyss (not that I suggest wearing stilletos on pine anyway). In your case I agree with a few commenters here of replacing with wood (cutting out rectangular section of floor and relaying new board). This is what I ended up doing in the nastier spots, and was not that time-consuming/costly. My end result was 1/16″-1/4″ gaps between the sub-floor boards, which actually gives a great dark contrast to the light pine, but it is definitely in the “rustic” category, so it is not for everybody. My humble suggestion would be to contact one of the floor finishers on this site (Carlos or JoseX2) to fix your bad boards and refinish the floor (satin water-based polyurethane!), you’d be surprised by how affordable it is.

BobMarvin | 10 years and 10 months ago
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“I read once (Old House Journal?) that you could put rope down between such gaps” The oakum, which I used years ago, but covered with wood filler, might be better than rope. In retrospect, I probably should have left out the wood filler. Oakum is a kind of tarred fiber. It was originally used to caulk wooden ships and is now used in soldering cast iron pipe. I think it’s sold at plumbing supply places.

NeoGrec | 10 years and 10 months ago
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15 years ago, our floor contractor filled the spaces in our pine sub-floors with some sort of mix of sawdust and a rubbery type of glue. Then polyurethaned over the entire floor surface. It looks great and has held up perfectly. Unfortunately I don’t have any details of the exact type of glue/filler used.

Putnamdenizen | 10 years and 10 months ago
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I read once (Old House Journal?) that you could put rope down between such gaps, but that may not be the look you want. We actually took up all the wide-board pine underfloor,put down plywood and reused the old flooring (very thick). With wastage we ended up with 2 rooms worth rather than 3\. In retrospect we should have ripped the boards as well as trimmed them, as the old tongue and groove was damaged and left gaps (which we filled with putty and which as others have noted did not last long). People seem to like our rustic look, however.

BobMarvin | 10 years and 10 months ago
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The very large crack in the center of your photograph might be fillable with a piece of wood, if you’re so inclined.

cate | 10 years and 10 months ago
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I would definitely fill the huge missing and broken bits in the photo above (not the gaps between boards) with something. Maybe epoxy is the way to go, as the poster above suggests, because it can move with the wood expansion and contraction, but I’ve never tried it.

steffanelzinga | 10 years and 10 months ago
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Epoxy always looks nice and it’s pretty dyi friendly

daveinbedstuy | 10 years and 10 months ago
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I agree with the eventual conclusions that both Bob and Cate came to….leave them. Either you want an older rustic look for your floors (complete with gaps and cracks) or you don’t (lay a new engineered floor on top). Filling them with any sort of filler eventually cracks loose. I have floors like that in Philly and have no problem with the cracks and imperfections. Funny story though…we had a very small Burmese cat who once got one of the id tags on his collar caught in one of the cracks. it was amusing for a short time before it came free!

cate | 10 years and 10 months ago
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We have the same thing. Previous occupants filled the huge cracks and gaps with what I take to be wood filler, and it held up great (until our then 18-month-old started attacking it). The filler we put into the narrow gaps cracked and came out almost immediately from wood expansion and is not worth bothering with. In any case, you put the filler in after sanding but before covering the whole thing in polyurethane (if you’re using poly). One thing that might help is if you apply the filler in the summer when the wood should be at its maximum size from humidity. These old pine/fir subfloors look beautiful even with lots of imperfections and gaps, IMHO.

BobMarvin | 10 years and 10 months ago
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Oh, as to your question about whether the filler matched, IIRC I was able to buy a colored version of Plastic Wood that matched fairly well. If I were to do this again I’d probably use Durham’s Water Putty (because it takes a stain). I had my whole floor sanded, stained, and varnished after filling in the cracks myself. If you were to just fill in the cracks without sanding (or at least re-varnishing) the entire floor I don’t think it’d look very good. I probably WOULDN’T bother with filling in the cracks again though, since it didn’t hold up very well.

BobMarvin | 10 years and 10 months ago
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Those floors aren’t hardwood; pine is softwood (although 100+ year old pine is actually pretty hard). I think that’s actually a subfloor, like I have in my kitchen. Before having my kitchen floor sanded and varnished I filled in the cracks with wood filler over oakum that I stuffed into the cracks with a screwdriver. It held up alright for a year or so, but eventually came out, for the most part, because of expansion and contraction of the boards. Thirty-nine years later the floor is pretty ratty looking and we plan, eventually, to have a new wooden floor laid over the subfloor. If you like the look of this pine floor I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with the cracks, which IMO aren’t a bad rustic look.