There are several ways you can get mold. You can get mold in a basement from leaks and floods. A pipe bursting can generate mold. Often mold is the result of water or moisture entering into the house. Sometimes mold exists simply because the indoor relative humidity is exceptionally high. When moisture accumulates in the house and has no way of being expelled, often you will see mold growth.
It is important to act on mold rapidly because it is harmful to your health and it can spread rapidly. Even if it is just in your wood floors for now, mold can produce spores on furniture, clothing, other areas of the house, and so forth. When you breathe in mold mold spores, it can create a serious health issue.
Some common ailments caused by black mold are breathing problems coupled with irritation to the mucous membranes, damage to the internal organs, skin inflammation, tiredness and nausea. Mold is also known to lower the immune system.
These symptoms will vary depending on the amount of time exposed and the degree of the mold. If the amount of mold is very small, chances are that the symptoms will not be serious. The people most affected by mold are children, pregnant women and the elderly.
You may not even know you have mold. Often mold does not create visible growth or odor. Nowadays, dogs are trained to sniff out mold just like drug dogs sniff out drugs. Sometimes the health risk of removing mold is so high that you have to ask yourself if it is better to hire a professional to remove it.
If you don’t remove mold properly, it will continue to spread. It means cleaning the area very well. Chances are that the mold is underneath the floor finish and in the actual wood. Unfortunately, if this is the case there is no topical cleaning solution or disinfectant that is going to work.
If you decide to remove the mold yourself, there are some important safety precautions to take. You should be wearing clothing that you can throw out in the garbage after or that you can dry clean. The reason for this is mold spores can get into your clothes and multiply. The best clothing to wear is coveralls. You don’t want any skin to be exposed. You also need to wear a proper respirator mask. If you wear a dust mask, you’re inviting mold spores to get through! You also should be wearing safety goggles. You will also need to wear rubber gloves.
If you plan to be removing the mold for several hours, you should take breaks in a well ventilated area with fresh air. You should also ventilate the moldy room with an exhaust fan installed in a window. This will prevent the mold from spreading.
To be on the safe side, you want to seal off the room as well as possible from the other rooms in the house. Use plastic sheets and duct tape to close off other rooms. This will ensure that the mold will not spread into other areas of your home. Mold releases chemicals and spores so you want to do your best to contain it. You also should make sure that infants and small children are not playing in the adjacent room while you are removing the mold.
Also, once you have sanded down the floor and treated the mold, you need to dispose of the sawdust very carefully. Place it in a plastic garbage bag. In fact, it is best to double bag it. Seal it. Rather than bringing it through the house to throw out, you actually want to throw it out at your closest window. You don’t want to bring mold spores through your house. Of course, this is a step to do with caution. If you live above the first floor, take caution and make sure that there is no one below. Don’t do this from an apartment building.
After you have removed the mold in your wood floors, you want the room to air out before using it. There may be toxins still in the air that you need to remove. Keep the windows wide open to ventilate it.
Cleaning the mold effectively is not good enough. You have to find the cause of the problem. If you don’t, you are just asking the mold to come back. You want to prevent future problems, too. Often mold grows in areas that have excess moisture.
As you now know how serious the health risks are with mold, ask yourself if you want to do the job or hire a professional. If you want to do it yourself, be sure to take all the necessary measures to remove the mold in a safe way that won’t harm you or your family. If you have any family members with asthma or respiratory problems, it is best to hire a professional. Mold On Hardwood Floors: Safety and Preparing The Removal
Some people think mold only grows in an old house with old wood floors. This is a myth. Mold can live on your hardwood floors whether they are new or old. It can occur in both old and new buildings.
There are several ways you can get mold. You can get mold in a basement from leaks and floods. A pipe bursting can generate mold. Often mold is the result of water or moisture entering into the house. Sometimes mold exists simply because the indoor relative humidity is exceptionally high. When moisture accumulates in the house and has no way of being expelled, often you will see mold growth.
It is important to act on mold rapidly because it is harmful to your health and it can spread rapidly. Even if it is just in your wood floors for now, mold can produce spores on furniture, clothing, other areas of the house, and so forth. When you breathe in mold mold spores, it can create a serious health issue.
Some common ailments caused by black mold are breathing problems coupled with irritation to the mucous membranes, damage to the internal organs, skin inflammation, tiredness and nausea. Mold is also known to lower the immune system.
These symptoms will vary depending on the amount of time exposed and the degree of the mold. If the amount of mold is very small, chances are that the symptoms will not be serious. The people most affected by mold are children, pregnant women and the elderly.
You may not even know you have mold. Often mold does not create visible growth or odor. Nowadays, dogs are trained to sniff out mold just like drug dogs sniff out drugs. Sometimes the health risk of removing mold is so high that you have to ask yourself if it is better to hire a professional to remove it.
If you don’t remove mold properly, it will continue to spread. It means cleaning the area very well. Chances are that the mold is underneath the floor finish and in the actual wood. Unfortunately, if this is the case there is no topical cleaning solution or disinfectant that is going to work.
If you decide to remove the mold yourself, there are some important safety precautions to take. You should be wearing clothing that you can throw out in the garbage after or that you can dry clean. The reason for this is mold spores can get into your clothes and multiply. The best clothing to wear is coveralls. You don’t want any skin to be exposed. You also need to wear a proper respirator mask. If you wear a dust mask, you’re inviting mold spores to get through! You also should be wearing safety goggles. You will also need to wear rubber gloves.
If you plan to be removing the mold for several hours, you should take breaks in a well ventilated area with fresh air. You should also ventilate the moldy room with an exhaust fan installed in a window. This will prevent the mold from spreading.
To be on the safe side, you want to seal off the room as well as possible from the other rooms in the house. Use plastic sheets and duct tape to close off other rooms. This will ensure that the mold will not spread into other areas of your home. Mold releases chemicals and spores so you want to do your best to contain it. You also should make sure that infants and small children are not playing in the adjacent room while you are removing the mold.
Also, once you have sanded down the floor and treated the mold, you need to dispose of the sawdust very carefully. Place it in a plastic garbage bag. In fact, it is best to double bag it. Seal it. Rather than bringing it through the house to throw out, you actually want to throw it out at your closest window. You don’t want to bring mold spores through your house. Of course, this is a step to do with caution. If you live above the first floor, take caution and make sure that there is no one below. Don’t do this from an apartment building.
After you have removed the mold in your wood floors, you want the room to air out before using it. There may be toxins still in the air that you need to remove. Keep the windows wide open to ventilate it.
Cleaning the mold effectively is not good enough. You have to find the cause of the problem. If you don’t, you are just asking the mold to come back. You want to prevent future problems, too. Often mold grows in areas that have excess moisture.
As you now know how serious the health risks are with mold, ask yourself if you want to do the job or hire a professional. If you want to do it yourself, be sure to take all the necessary measures to remove the mold in a safe way that won’t harm you or your family. If you have any family members with asthma or respiratory problems, it is best to hire a professional.
There are several ways you can get mold. You can get mold in a basement from leaks and floods. A pipe bursting can generate mold. Often mold is the result of water or moisture entering into the house. Sometimes mold exists simply because the indoor relative humidity is exceptionally high. When moisture accumulates in the house and has no way of being expelled, often you will see mold growth.
It is important to act on mold rapidly because it is harmful to your health and it can spread rapidly. Even if it is just in your wood floors for now, mold can produce spores on furniture, clothing, other areas of the house, and so forth. When you breathe in mold mold spores, it can create a serious health issue.
Some common ailments caused by black mold are breathing problems coupled with irritation to the mucous membranes, damage to the internal organs, skin inflammation, tiredness and nausea. Mold is also known to lower the immune system.
These symptoms will vary depending on the amount of time exposed and the degree of the mold. If the amount of mold is very small, chances are that the symptoms will not be serious. The people most affected by mold are children, pregnant women and the elderly.
You may not even know you have mold. Often mold does not create visible growth or odor. Nowadays, dogs are trained to sniff out mold just like drug dogs sniff out drugs. Sometimes the health risk of removing mold is so high that you have to ask yourself if it is better to hire a professional to remove it.
If you don’t remove mold properly, it will continue to spread. It means cleaning the area very well. Chances are that the mold is underneath the floor finish and in the actual wood. Unfortunately, if this is the case there is no topical cleaning solution or disinfectant that is going to work.
If you decide to remove the mold yourself, there are some important safety precautions to take. You should be wearing clothing that you can throw out in the garbage after or that you can dry clean. The reason for this is mold spores can get into your clothes and multiply. The best clothing to wear is coveralls. You don’t want any skin to be exposed. You also need to wear a proper respirator mask. If you wear a dust mask, you’re inviting mold spores to get through! You also should be wearing safety goggles. You will also need to wear rubber gloves.
If you plan to be removing the mold for several hours, you should take breaks in a well ventilated area with fresh air. You should also ventilate the moldy room with an exhaust fan installed in a window. This will prevent the mold from spreading.
To be on the safe side, you want to seal off the room as well as possible from the other rooms in the house. Use plastic sheets and duct tape to close off other rooms. This will ensure that the mold will not spread into other areas of your home. Mold releases chemicals and spores so you want to do your best to contain it. You also should make sure that infants and small children are not playing in the adjacent room while you are removing the mold.
Also, once you have sanded down the floor and treated the mold, you need to dispose of the sawdust very carefully. Place it in a plastic garbage bag. In fact, it is best to double bag it. Seal it. Rather than bringing it through the house to throw out, you actually want to throw it out at your closest window. You don’t want to bring mold spores through your house. Of course, this is a step to do with caution. If you live above the first floor, take caution and make sure that there is no one below. Don’t do this from an apartment building.
After you have removed the mold in your wood floors, you want the room to air out before using it. There may be toxins still in the air that you need to remove. Keep the windows wide open to ventilate it.
Cleaning the mold effectively is not good enough. You have to find the cause of the problem. If you don’t, you are just asking the mold to come back. You want to prevent future problems, too. Often mold grows in areas that have excess moisture.
As you now know how serious the health risks are with mold, ask yourself if you want to do the job or hire a professional. If you want to do it yourself, be sure to take all the necessary measures to remove the mold in a safe way that won’t harm you or your family. If you have any family members with asthma or respiratory problems, it is best to hire a professional. Installing Cork Floors
Cork flooring is growing in popularity. People like it because it is durable, soundproof and soft to stand on. It is terrific for anyone who suffers from joint pain.
Installing cork floors is similar to installing hardwood floors. Use the manufacturer’s guidelines for installing your floor. This will protect you should something go wrong. (Not to say that it will, but you rather be safe than sorry!)
I have read the installation instructions for AmCork (American Cork Products Company). They state that you must adhere your floor tiles using DriTac 6200. They give specific brands of polyurethane as well. These include Traffic by BonaKemi or X-Terra by DuraSeal. If you use either of these polyurethanes, you will be protected under their 25 year warranty.
If you deviate from their product suggestions, you will immediately void your cork floor warranty! There are lots of varnishes on the market that are poor quality. They are not strong enough to hold up, especially some of the residential grade ones. The weaker the varnish, the more likely your cork floor will dent.
Not All Cork Floors Are Created Equally
Cork is a popular choice because if coated properly it is fairly resistant to scuffs. If it has a poor finishing, most people will be pretty unhappy because it will scuff easily. Some kinds of cork are not as strong and long-lasting. Some varieties can be so soft that you can carve your name into the surface. These cork floors will develop many indents overtime.How Cork Can Be Purchased
If you decide on cork, it is available in unfinished or prefinished. There are three varieties for cork flooring. They come in planks, standard tiles and mosaic tiles. There are also options for finishes. A cork floor can be finished in acrylic, urethane or wax. These floors can be left in their natural color or they can be stained or even painted. Cork can also be solid or laminate. Traditional panel cork floors are installed like tongue and groove. They are interlocking boards. However, there are new forms of cork floor that have been designed so they are easy for anyone to install. Green Building Supply Environmentally Friendly Home Center has UniClick, which is a patented European design. This is a style of floorboards that click together like a gigantic puzzle. A cork floor can be a floating floor. This is a glueless construction. The floating floor panel is cork. There is a stabilizing core above the floating floor, either made from high density fiberboard (HDF) or medium density fiberboard (MDF). The edges of the panels are milled so that they interlock adjoining pieces. The cork core is the next layer. This layer varies depending on the manufacturer. Its purpose is to provide impact absorption and insulation. The cork bark veneer is the top layer of the floor. It is either a veneer from the tree bark or cork that has been processed to get a certain pattern or texture. The wear surface can either have a factory finish or one that the consumer chooses.Laying Cork Floors
Installing cork floors is similar to installing hardwood floors. Use the manufacturer’s guidelines for installing your floor. This will protect you should something go wrong. (Not to say that it will, but you rather be safe than sorry!)
I have read the installation instructions for AmCork (American Cork Products Company). They state that you must adhere your floor tiles using DriTac 6200. They give specific brands of polyurethane as well. These include Traffic by BonaKemi or X-Terra by DuraSeal. If you use either of these polyurethanes, you will be protected under their 25 year warranty.
If you deviate from their product suggestions, you will immediately void your cork floor warranty! There are lots of varnishes on the market that are poor quality. They are not strong enough to hold up, especially some of the residential grade ones. The weaker the varnish, the more likely your cork floor will dent.
Cork On Concrete and Plywood
Cork floors can be installed on concrete. The underlayment should be 1/4″. Like any other wood floor, the concrete must be level and smooth. If it is uneven, you will run into problems. The moisture level should not exceed 3 pounds in a 1,000 square foot area. If you are installing cork overtop plywood, the plywood should be 1/2 and inch thick.Cork and Radiant Heat
It is best not to install cork floors over a radiant heat system. Cork expands and contracts. In the summer, there will be noticeable gaps in your floor, should you decide to install a cork floor over a radiant heat system.Making Your Cork Floor Look Unique
When laying cork, you want the pattern to look unique. The best thing to do is open up all of your cartons of cork and lay them side by side from different cartons. The more you mix the tiles, the more variety of colors and patterns you will yield. You want to leave 1/4″ expansion space because cork will expand just like other types of wood flooring. Also, if moisture levels are high, your cork floor should be installed rather tightly. If moisture levels are relatively low, you should lay your cork floor not too snugly. Give your cork floor to have room to expand when the moisture content level rises. If you do not do a moisture test and you find out the hard way that you have too much moisture, you will have to rip up your floor. If cork is laid on moist or damp concrete, overtime it will create a balloon effect. It will puff up as much as it can.Engineered Cork
The fancier varieties and the engineered kind of cork have a paper thin wear layer over a cork composite cushion layer. If this layer is very thin, it will more than likely get damaged easily. If you have a dog, it may not even scratch the floor, it may dent the floor! These types of cork should never be used in high traffic areas. The unique characteristic is that the patterns tend to be so busy that scratches blend in. So if you do have a ding in your floor, you can use some cork filler and polyurethane. Moving furniture, dropping a kitchen pot or wearing high heel shoes is enough to dent your floor.Life of A Cork Floor
Like hardwood floors, cork is quite durable if maintained. It requires a certain kind of maintenance. Sharp objects will permanently scratch a cork floor. Unlike hardwood floors, cork cannot be sanded down. If the scratches don’t blend in, there is nothing you can really do about them. Once you have scratches, they are there to stay! If you go with cork tiles, they are so flexible that the edges may curl up over time, not the top coat of finish but the cork itself. However, if you have problems with one tile or an area of tiles, they can be broken up and ripped out on their own. Smooth out the underlayment. Install a new tile. You don’t need to take up the entire cork floor! It is an easy D.I.Y. job for a weekend. Cork can be almost as durable as hardwood floors. Use a strong finish and chances are that it won’t scratch or dent too quickly. A cork floor can easily be refinished. A cork floor should last upwards of 30 years if treated properly. In contrast, a hardwood floor will last you between 100 and 300 years if properly maintained. There are both positives and negatives to cork floors.Your Floor and Your Lifestyle
The most important thing to keep in mind if you are deciding on cork is your lifestyle. If you redecorate a room frequently and move furniture often, cork is not for you. If you plop your furniture down and don’t move it around often and you like walking around barefoot, this might be a very appealing floor.How to Acclimate a Wood Floor
Many homeowners are not aware of how humidity affects wood floors until they experience it first hand. Oftentimes, the wood floor installer has laid the floorboards too quickly and skipped a critical first step. This step is known as acclimating your wood floor. This procedure is important for all varieties of wood floors like hardwood, prefinished and engineered.
Before laying a wood floor, you want to measure the moisture content of the atmosphere in the room where the floor is being laid as well as the floorboards themselves. This can be done with a hygrometer or a moisture meter. This can be purchased online or at your local electronics store. Stay away from the cheap metal ones. They will not give you an accurate moisture reading. They should be close in their moisture content (MC). You should measure the moisture content over the span of a few days to notice any fluctuations and to get a more accurate reading. Typically, 72 hours or 3 days should do the trick.
If they are not close, you should not be laying your floor yet. Instead, you should be letting them sit in the room allowing them to reach the relative humidity of the room. You need to be patient at this time. If you rush, chances are you will have warped floorboards in the future. If your flooring contractor insists on laying your floorboards right away, personally I would question his workmanship. With all varieties of wood floors, you need to acclimate. This is never an instant process. Besides, chances are that when you receive your floorboards, they are coming off a boat that has been on the ocean for awhile coming from a faraway place like Asia. You have no idea what the moisture content of the wood is at and it will probably take some time to adjust and acclimate.
The floorboards have to become accustomed to and reach an equilibrium of the relative humidity (RH) level of your house. This may take as much as several weeks to reach a moisture reading of 9 or 10% in a climate like Florida and with solid wood floorboards. This will prevent moisture damage in the future. You should never bring your wooden floorboards home and install them right away. It is asking for immediate shrinking or swelling, depending on the humidity level of your house and the time of year.
If acclimated correctly, the floor will not shrink or swell once it is installed. This is only true if you are responsible and make sure that the atmospheric humidity of your home does not fluctuate significantly. You should put your floorboards in a room with 1 percent more than the intended equilibrium moisture content (EMC). The EMC is when the wood is not going to absorb or lose any more water. The room should also have some fans to move the air throughout the room. If the floorboards are too wet, you can correct this by putting them in a room that has 1 or 2 percent less moisture than the intended moisture level.
If they are not close, you should not be laying your floor yet. Instead, you should be letting them sit in the room allowing them to reach the relative humidity of the room. You need to be patient at this time. If you rush, chances are you will have warped floorboards in the future. If your flooring contractor insists on laying your floorboards right away, personally I would question his workmanship. With all varieties of wood floors, you need to acclimate. This is never an instant process. Besides, chances are that when you receive your floorboards, they are coming off a boat that has been on the ocean for awhile coming from a faraway place like Asia. You have no idea what the moisture content of the wood is at and it will probably take some time to adjust and acclimate.
The floorboards have to become accustomed to and reach an equilibrium of the relative humidity (RH) level of your house. This may take as much as several weeks to reach a moisture reading of 9 or 10% in a climate like Florida and with solid wood floorboards. This will prevent moisture damage in the future. You should never bring your wooden floorboards home and install them right away. It is asking for immediate shrinking or swelling, depending on the humidity level of your house and the time of year.
If acclimated correctly, the floor will not shrink or swell once it is installed. This is only true if you are responsible and make sure that the atmospheric humidity of your home does not fluctuate significantly. You should put your floorboards in a room with 1 percent more than the intended equilibrium moisture content (EMC). The EMC is when the wood is not going to absorb or lose any more water. The room should also have some fans to move the air throughout the room. If the floorboards are too wet, you can correct this by putting them in a room that has 1 or 2 percent less moisture than the intended moisture level.
It is up to you to keep your relative humidity consistent and stabilize your indoor environment. Keep your wood floor beautiful! Also, think twice before getting a wood floor in your kitchen and bathroom. These are two rooms in your house that will always have water problems. No matter how well you have acclimated your boards, you will just be asking for trouble.
I suggest reading my article, “The Science Behind Moisture and Wood Floors” to learn about how and why wood reacts to humidity. How To Stain Wood Floors Without The Blotchy Effect
I’m going to continue the procedure I started in the sanding article. I will talk about what type of stains to use on particular woods, and the best methods to apply them. I will also talk about the dreaded white pigmented stain, dye stains, and ebonizing wood floors. I hope you find the article enjoyable and informative.
Well, I hope for your sake, the sanding has gone well, and you have checked for edger and “drum chatter” marks. So now is the time for a really thorough vacuuming. You must get the dust out of the wood grain, especially on ring porous woods like oak. Use a powerful industrial vacuum, even if you have to rent one. Go over the whole floor at least twice, and don’t forget the corners and edges should be done with a crevice attachment.
The stain should be one that is suitable to the species of your wood floor and one that applies easily to a large wood floor surface. There are 4 basic types of stains. The pigmented wiping stains are the most prevalent. They contain a small amount of pigment, which is carried along by the large amount of solvent in these stains. The pigment particles are fairly large, and lodge in the pores of the wood. Oak, ash and hickory do well by this sort of stain. There is a binder in this type of stain, that is a diluted form of varnish. When the stain is dry the binder will keep the pigment particles (being dust-like if they dried on their own) from being wiped from the pores.
Use a rag to apply this stain, as you will be flooding the surface with the stain and then working the stain into the pores of the wood and any cracks. Only rags seem to do this well. Try to use the most lint free cotton rags you can find. This may seem fussy, but will save you from having to sand lint out of the dried floor finish later.
Well, I hope for your sake, the sanding has gone well, and you have checked for edger and “drum chatter” marks. So now is the time for a really thorough vacuuming. You must get the dust out of the wood grain, especially on ring porous woods like oak. Use a powerful industrial vacuum, even if you have to rent one. Go over the whole floor at least twice, and don’t forget the corners and edges should be done with a crevice attachment.
The stain should be one that is suitable to the species of your wood floor and one that applies easily to a large wood floor surface. There are 4 basic types of stains. The pigmented wiping stains are the most prevalent. They contain a small amount of pigment, which is carried along by the large amount of solvent in these stains. The pigment particles are fairly large, and lodge in the pores of the wood. Oak, ash and hickory do well by this sort of stain. There is a binder in this type of stain, that is a diluted form of varnish. When the stain is dry the binder will keep the pigment particles (being dust-like if they dried on their own) from being wiped from the pores.
Use a rag to apply this stain, as you will be flooding the surface with the stain and then working the stain into the pores of the wood and any cracks. Only rags seem to do this well. Try to use the most lint free cotton rags you can find. This may seem fussy, but will save you from having to sand lint out of the dried floor finish later.
Stopping those annoying squeaks in your wood floors!
In most cases the three wood floor members (the joist, subfloor and finished hardwood) have separated, and the nails binding them are moving in the nail holes. A little dust in these nail shafts makes the boards squeak. That’s why talc, wax and graphite offer a temporary solution. But why not try a permanent fix? Oh, by the way, simply resanding and finishing a squeaky floor will do little to solve the squeaking problem, don’t let any contractor con you into just doing that.
This separation is generally caused by seasonal shifting of the boards, and you would be well advised to keep the indoor relative humidity levels to about 40-60%. And I do mean all year round. Sadly though some hardwood floors were poorly nailed in the first place. A lot of wood floor contractors will not do the proper preparation of the subfloor, or they will lay a hardwood floor in the wrong direction. Be sure to read my Wrong Way Floor article (free) in the Case in Point section of this web site. Or worse yet they will have stapled the floor down with those awful flooring staples. Read the other free article about these lousy fasteners in the Primatech article in the Floored News. In the worst case you may have a OSB subfloor that got rained on during construction, and now causes no end of popping or squeaking.
I spare no details in this article. I will discuss a simple renailing of the loose boards on up to how to remove and reinstall a wood floor. I will give you not only the methods, but the access to the proper (yet inexpensive) tools to do the job well the first time.
If you can access the floor from under the joists you can try a nifty new product called Squeak-Ender at http://www.squeakender.com
They have several well-engineered solutions to squeaking and sagging floors, and it’s worth checking out. These products will save you from having to nail the floor from the top. The Squeakender’s web site has excellent illustrations of these products, so I needn’t explain this method further. Suffice it to say these are brackets that are fastened to the joist and subfloor, and then are ratcheted down to bring the subfloor permanently tight with the joist. Oh how I love good engineering!
You may however, have to use some of the following methods if these Squeak Ender products are only somewhat effective. Or you are a dedicated DIY’er and hate to buy anything you think is that expensive, complex or worse yet “engineered”. Also, what do you do when you find that the second floor boards squeak or a finished basement ceiling covers the underside of the floor joists on a main floor? Just how can you re-nail a hardwood floor in these situations?
Well, you will need to find where the joists run under the subfloor, so that when you re-nail the hardwood, it will pull all three flooring members together down and stop the movement. This method as you can imagine works best when the hardwood boards run at right angles to the joist.
To find these joists, remove the quarter round or molding from the edge of the floor. You only need to remove the molding running at right angles to the joist. Drill a 1/4″ hole in this space (or no larger than the molding will cover) and insert a bent coat hanger or stiff wire. In either direction you will feel the wire bump up against the joist. Measure over and drill another hole closer to the joist and test again, until you have determined the edge and then infer the center of this joist. It’s easy to mistake a cross brace for a joist so always double confirm, by pre drilling or “nail spinning” a finishing nail into where you think the joist is.
When you hammer a nail into the joist it will feel firm all the way down if you have located the center of the floor joist. I explain nail spinning later.
Do the same on the opposite side of the room, and snap a chalk line between the two. This should represent the run of the floor joists under the hardwood strips. They should, in most modern houses, run every 16″, but you may have to drill more edge holes to confirm this. If the room is wider than 15 feet, there may be a supporting beam separating two separate runs of joists. And they may not line up with each other across the room. Also, around stairwells the floor joists may run a little closer, and be framed in differently to accommodate a joist header. You can only see this from below, even if you have to poke a small view hole in a basement, or main floor ceiling.
Oh, how I wish they made an electronic stud finder that would scan into the two layers of hardwood and subfloor. But as of this writing I know of none that will function well without many false readings.
If you are unlucky enough to have the hardwood running in the same direction as the floor joists, you will only be able to re-nail one strip of hardwood every 16″ (as the joists are spaced). This will quiet a squeaky subfloor a bit, but you may have to nail between the joist with 2″ finishing nails in an attempt to quiet the loose hardwood in between the joists. In this case working from below with the Squeak Enders product may be the best idea. Even if you have to bring down part of the basement ceiling. I guess it depends on just how determined to are to silence your floor.
Once you have marked out all the joists with the chalk line, determine which side of the hardwood strip is the tongue side. You will want to pre-drill or “nail spin” a 3″ spiral finishing nail, so that this nail goes through the tongue side of the hardwood floor board through the subfloor, and penetrates the joist quite solidly. Nail spinners are a must and are available at http://www.leevalley.com Prod. #99K20.01
The nail should be spun in at about a 45-degree angle, the same as a new floor installation. This 3″ nail should be only used for 3/4″ thick floors, use shorter ones for thinner strip floors. A 2 1/2″ nail should be used for 1/2″ and 3/8″ hardwood strip floor so as not to crack the tongues. The nail spinner works wonders for this application, I don’t do repairs or installations without it. But be sure to use the spiral or “ardox” type nail in this use.
Modern floor joists are much less than 2″ wide so they are easy to miss. Again, you can tell when you are hitting the joists when the nailing feels solid all the way in. Set the nail below the surface with the proper sized nail set, and fill with colored filler. Use colored latex filler that will dry hard if you plan on sanding the floor now. If this is a finished or prefinished floor that will not be sanded later, use the latex filler with care. Be sure to wipe off all excess with a wet rag, then a dry rag. This will prevent an unsightly smear on the finished wood. Choose a color just slightly darker than the finished wood. With the latex fillers I find I can come back the next day and apply a careful drop of floor finish on the filled hole to make it look more like the finished wood surface.
Or you can use non-drying oil based putty, whose excess is wiped off with paint thinner or mineral spirits. You cannot apply a finish to these types of putties. Putty sticks have this kind of putty in them.
You can do this renailing on every sixth board or so and see how it works. Then put more nails between these if you need to. Don’t over do it, or you will have a really pock marked floor. But if the hardwood boards are really gapped this may not be noticeable at all, once you set the nail deep in this gap.
What do you think, is all this worth while? I think it is. It’s got to be a lot easier than removing the hardwood, renailing the subfloor, and replacing the floor with the same wood or new floor. But for the really ambitious readers this is possible too. I’ll describe now the tools and methods for removing an old gapped and squeaky hardwood floor, without wrecking it. Just make sure the old floor that your are trying to salvage is still thick enough to survive the removal, and later the sanding process.
You remove an old floor the opposite way it went in. Start at the far end of the room where the last few boards were laid. They will have their tongues pointing toward the wall. The last 2-3 rows will be face nailed. You will only have to crack one board in half (with a chisel and mallet) in the last row to remove it. Then use a cat’s paw restorer at:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.asp?SID=&ccurrency=1&page=32014&category
This tool will gently remove the boards without damaging them. Try to scoot the thin edge of the catspaw under where the floor is nailed, and pry just a little at a time. Once you work backwards into the room and get some maneuvering space you can use a larger tool: http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.asp?SID=&ccurrency=1&page=32015&category
The renovator bar will ease up the most stubborn boards.
Once you have the whole floor removed, re-nail and repair the subfloor, so that when the hardwood goes back, it will be squeak free. Re-nail the subfloor with the spiral spikes that are at least 3 times the thickness of the subfloor. A one-inch thick pine plank subfloor needs 3″ nails to refasten it to the joists. A subfloor board 4-6″ wide needs two nails on EVERY joist. Wider subfloor boards need 3 or even 4 nails to firm them up. This is the last chance you have to fix the subfloor. Oh, and even a plywood subfloor needs renailing, as often the original builder skips joists and has the nails too far apart. The nails should be every 6″ or so, on plywood.
I use a pneumatic framing nailer when I take this step before installing a new floor. But I am careful to set the pressure so the nail heads end up slightly proud of the surface. I go back over those rows after the magazine is empty and pound these nails flush with the surface with my 20 oz. decking hammer. This does two things: it assures that the nails will not be over pressured and set too deeply into the wood, thus damaging the strength of the subfloor. Also the pounding releases most of the dust and debris that may be caught between the subfloor and the joist. That way my new floors are always squeak free.
If your are unlucky enough to have a water damaged OSB subfloor that is causing some popping and squeaking, consider adding 3/4’ plywood over it, as a superior nailing surface. Or I would simply (sorry, not simply but really expensively!!) replace the OSB with plywood. This is a complex issue and I address subfloor requirements in the Strip Floor article in this Paid series of articles, be sure you read it, if you have OSB as a subfloor and it squeaks or pops as you walk across it.
These additional articles on plank and strip floor will help you determine just what fasteners to use and what subfloor requirements your salvaged floor will need. After all that work or removal, it would be a shame to have it squeak again. Whenever I re-nail a subfloor (before I lay a new hardwood floor) I always walk over the floor to make sure it is squeak free. Again, it’s just too late when the new floor is installed.
Here are just a few more suggestions before I close this article. You will see a lot of fairly lame solutions in stores to quiet squeaky hardwood floor. Please stay away from the long snap off screws, which are better suited on carpeted floor. They can easily crack the hardwood, or snap off halfway in. They may seriously mar the surface of a prefinished wood floor.
Shims under the floor are only used if there is a low spot in the floor. Which is rare. If you pound in a shim under the subfloor, you may muffle a squeak, but cause a permanent hump in the finished floor above. If you find that a subfloor board is cracked or not meeting the joist (when you view it from underneath) this would be the case to screw a ledge of plywood to the joist to correct this. You might even consider a bridge of plywood between the joists held up by two ledger boards, if the subfloor is really damaged.
But for general squeaks nailing a ledger board to the side of the joist is rarely as effective as using the Squeak Enders products I mentioned before. And as of this writing they have not paid me a cent to mention their products, except to give me samples, which work quite well.
So there you have it finally the definitive article on how to cure those annoying squeaky wood floors. I’m finally finished this after having answered e-mail questions on this subject hundreds of times. I hope I have done this well.
This separation is generally caused by seasonal shifting of the boards, and you would be well advised to keep the indoor relative humidity levels to about 40-60%. And I do mean all year round. Sadly though some hardwood floors were poorly nailed in the first place. A lot of wood floor contractors will not do the proper preparation of the subfloor, or they will lay a hardwood floor in the wrong direction. Be sure to read my Wrong Way Floor article (free) in the Case in Point section of this web site. Or worse yet they will have stapled the floor down with those awful flooring staples. Read the other free article about these lousy fasteners in the Primatech article in the Floored News. In the worst case you may have a OSB subfloor that got rained on during construction, and now causes no end of popping or squeaking.
I spare no details in this article. I will discuss a simple renailing of the loose boards on up to how to remove and reinstall a wood floor. I will give you not only the methods, but the access to the proper (yet inexpensive) tools to do the job well the first time.
If you can access the floor from under the joists you can try a nifty new product called Squeak-Ender at http://www.squeakender.com
They have several well-engineered solutions to squeaking and sagging floors, and it’s worth checking out. These products will save you from having to nail the floor from the top. The Squeakender’s web site has excellent illustrations of these products, so I needn’t explain this method further. Suffice it to say these are brackets that are fastened to the joist and subfloor, and then are ratcheted down to bring the subfloor permanently tight with the joist. Oh how I love good engineering!
You may however, have to use some of the following methods if these Squeak Ender products are only somewhat effective. Or you are a dedicated DIY’er and hate to buy anything you think is that expensive, complex or worse yet “engineered”. Also, what do you do when you find that the second floor boards squeak or a finished basement ceiling covers the underside of the floor joists on a main floor? Just how can you re-nail a hardwood floor in these situations?
Well, you will need to find where the joists run under the subfloor, so that when you re-nail the hardwood, it will pull all three flooring members together down and stop the movement. This method as you can imagine works best when the hardwood boards run at right angles to the joist.
To find these joists, remove the quarter round or molding from the edge of the floor. You only need to remove the molding running at right angles to the joist. Drill a 1/4″ hole in this space (or no larger than the molding will cover) and insert a bent coat hanger or stiff wire. In either direction you will feel the wire bump up against the joist. Measure over and drill another hole closer to the joist and test again, until you have determined the edge and then infer the center of this joist. It’s easy to mistake a cross brace for a joist so always double confirm, by pre drilling or “nail spinning” a finishing nail into where you think the joist is.
When you hammer a nail into the joist it will feel firm all the way down if you have located the center of the floor joist. I explain nail spinning later.
Do the same on the opposite side of the room, and snap a chalk line between the two. This should represent the run of the floor joists under the hardwood strips. They should, in most modern houses, run every 16″, but you may have to drill more edge holes to confirm this. If the room is wider than 15 feet, there may be a supporting beam separating two separate runs of joists. And they may not line up with each other across the room. Also, around stairwells the floor joists may run a little closer, and be framed in differently to accommodate a joist header. You can only see this from below, even if you have to poke a small view hole in a basement, or main floor ceiling.
Oh, how I wish they made an electronic stud finder that would scan into the two layers of hardwood and subfloor. But as of this writing I know of none that will function well without many false readings.
If you are unlucky enough to have the hardwood running in the same direction as the floor joists, you will only be able to re-nail one strip of hardwood every 16″ (as the joists are spaced). This will quiet a squeaky subfloor a bit, but you may have to nail between the joist with 2″ finishing nails in an attempt to quiet the loose hardwood in between the joists. In this case working from below with the Squeak Enders product may be the best idea. Even if you have to bring down part of the basement ceiling. I guess it depends on just how determined to are to silence your floor.
Once you have marked out all the joists with the chalk line, determine which side of the hardwood strip is the tongue side. You will want to pre-drill or “nail spin” a 3″ spiral finishing nail, so that this nail goes through the tongue side of the hardwood floor board through the subfloor, and penetrates the joist quite solidly. Nail spinners are a must and are available at http://www.leevalley.com Prod. #99K20.01
The nail should be spun in at about a 45-degree angle, the same as a new floor installation. This 3″ nail should be only used for 3/4″ thick floors, use shorter ones for thinner strip floors. A 2 1/2″ nail should be used for 1/2″ and 3/8″ hardwood strip floor so as not to crack the tongues. The nail spinner works wonders for this application, I don’t do repairs or installations without it. But be sure to use the spiral or “ardox” type nail in this use.
Modern floor joists are much less than 2″ wide so they are easy to miss. Again, you can tell when you are hitting the joists when the nailing feels solid all the way in. Set the nail below the surface with the proper sized nail set, and fill with colored filler. Use colored latex filler that will dry hard if you plan on sanding the floor now. If this is a finished or prefinished floor that will not be sanded later, use the latex filler with care. Be sure to wipe off all excess with a wet rag, then a dry rag. This will prevent an unsightly smear on the finished wood. Choose a color just slightly darker than the finished wood. With the latex fillers I find I can come back the next day and apply a careful drop of floor finish on the filled hole to make it look more like the finished wood surface.
Or you can use non-drying oil based putty, whose excess is wiped off with paint thinner or mineral spirits. You cannot apply a finish to these types of putties. Putty sticks have this kind of putty in them.
You can do this renailing on every sixth board or so and see how it works. Then put more nails between these if you need to. Don’t over do it, or you will have a really pock marked floor. But if the hardwood boards are really gapped this may not be noticeable at all, once you set the nail deep in this gap.
What do you think, is all this worth while? I think it is. It’s got to be a lot easier than removing the hardwood, renailing the subfloor, and replacing the floor with the same wood or new floor. But for the really ambitious readers this is possible too. I’ll describe now the tools and methods for removing an old gapped and squeaky hardwood floor, without wrecking it. Just make sure the old floor that your are trying to salvage is still thick enough to survive the removal, and later the sanding process.
You remove an old floor the opposite way it went in. Start at the far end of the room where the last few boards were laid. They will have their tongues pointing toward the wall. The last 2-3 rows will be face nailed. You will only have to crack one board in half (with a chisel and mallet) in the last row to remove it. Then use a cat’s paw restorer at:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.asp?SID=&ccurrency=1&page=32014&category
This tool will gently remove the boards without damaging them. Try to scoot the thin edge of the catspaw under where the floor is nailed, and pry just a little at a time. Once you work backwards into the room and get some maneuvering space you can use a larger tool: http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.asp?SID=&ccurrency=1&page=32015&category
The renovator bar will ease up the most stubborn boards.
Once you have the whole floor removed, re-nail and repair the subfloor, so that when the hardwood goes back, it will be squeak free. Re-nail the subfloor with the spiral spikes that are at least 3 times the thickness of the subfloor. A one-inch thick pine plank subfloor needs 3″ nails to refasten it to the joists. A subfloor board 4-6″ wide needs two nails on EVERY joist. Wider subfloor boards need 3 or even 4 nails to firm them up. This is the last chance you have to fix the subfloor. Oh, and even a plywood subfloor needs renailing, as often the original builder skips joists and has the nails too far apart. The nails should be every 6″ or so, on plywood.
I use a pneumatic framing nailer when I take this step before installing a new floor. But I am careful to set the pressure so the nail heads end up slightly proud of the surface. I go back over those rows after the magazine is empty and pound these nails flush with the surface with my 20 oz. decking hammer. This does two things: it assures that the nails will not be over pressured and set too deeply into the wood, thus damaging the strength of the subfloor. Also the pounding releases most of the dust and debris that may be caught between the subfloor and the joist. That way my new floors are always squeak free.
If your are unlucky enough to have a water damaged OSB subfloor that is causing some popping and squeaking, consider adding 3/4’ plywood over it, as a superior nailing surface. Or I would simply (sorry, not simply but really expensively!!) replace the OSB with plywood. This is a complex issue and I address subfloor requirements in the Strip Floor article in this Paid series of articles, be sure you read it, if you have OSB as a subfloor and it squeaks or pops as you walk across it.
These additional articles on plank and strip floor will help you determine just what fasteners to use and what subfloor requirements your salvaged floor will need. After all that work or removal, it would be a shame to have it squeak again. Whenever I re-nail a subfloor (before I lay a new hardwood floor) I always walk over the floor to make sure it is squeak free. Again, it’s just too late when the new floor is installed.
Here are just a few more suggestions before I close this article. You will see a lot of fairly lame solutions in stores to quiet squeaky hardwood floor. Please stay away from the long snap off screws, which are better suited on carpeted floor. They can easily crack the hardwood, or snap off halfway in. They may seriously mar the surface of a prefinished wood floor.
Shims under the floor are only used if there is a low spot in the floor. Which is rare. If you pound in a shim under the subfloor, you may muffle a squeak, but cause a permanent hump in the finished floor above. If you find that a subfloor board is cracked or not meeting the joist (when you view it from underneath) this would be the case to screw a ledge of plywood to the joist to correct this. You might even consider a bridge of plywood between the joists held up by two ledger boards, if the subfloor is really damaged.
But for general squeaks nailing a ledger board to the side of the joist is rarely as effective as using the Squeak Enders products I mentioned before. And as of this writing they have not paid me a cent to mention their products, except to give me samples, which work quite well.
So there you have it finally the definitive article on how to cure those annoying squeaky wood floors. I’m finally finished this after having answered e-mail questions on this subject hundreds of times. I hope I have done this well. Plank Floor: What Special Considerations This Type of Floor Raises
My definition of a plank floor is anything 4″ and wider. One of the biggest mistakes I see in the wood floor industry is the failure to treat plank floor like the special item it is. And the very worst kind of plank floor is the prefinished wide boards. If you are thinking about installing a wide plank floor read this article carefully, and consider if this product is worth the trouble for you. In the North East here we have hot and humid summers, and then,heat our houses to desert dryness during the winter. So be sure to install the 4″ and wider boards in the manor I describe below. In some very moisture stable climates, 4″ boards may be still OK to install like strip floor. But don’t try to get away with a simple nailing when you go wider that 4″, you’ll regret it no matter what climate you experience. In any climate you must try to keep the relative indoor humidity within 40-60% if you want minimal movements of these wide boards.
With a sharp increase in humidity (30% or more) the 4″ board will expand twice as much as the 2″ one. These wide boards will exert tremendous pressure against each other. They can actually crush each other slightly and push out along the sides of the floor into the expansion spaces (hopefully provided). The floor will remain tight until the winter heating season sets in. A lot of homes are heated very well but no humidity is added to the air. A simple attachment to the furnace duct will provide this with a forced air system. Or you can get various portable humidifiers and put them in several locations. The prefinished floors are more subject to moisture changes because they are not sealed in any way on the many seams. The best thing one could do with a prefinished plank floor would be to recoat the surface several times after it has been installed. It sort of defeats the purpose or prefinished, and you may also find that these durable conversion finishes are difficult to get any kind of finish to stick to them.
THE FOLLOWING DESCRIPTION OF SUBLFOORS ASSUMES THAT YOUR SUBFLOOR RESTS ON 16″ CENTER TO CENTER JOISTS. IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING UP TO 24″ BETWEEN THESE JOISTS YOU MUST ADD ANOTHER 1/4″ OF PLYWOOD. THIS WOULD BE BEST DONE IN 1/2″ LAYERS TO GIVE THE FULL STIFFNESS OF THE PLYWOOD. AND A URETHANE ADHESIVE NEEDS TO BE SQUIGGLED BETWEEN THESE LONG SPANNING JOIST ALSO. FAIL THIS AND YOU WILL HAVE A SQUEAKY FLOOR IN A FEW YEARS.
Central heating has been a great improvement to our home comfort but in most houses not enough humidity is added to the air. A simple attachment to the furnace duct will provide this with a forced air system. Or you can get various portable humidifiers and put them in several locations. Prefinished plank floors are more subject to moisture changes because they are not sealed in any way on the many seams. The best thing one could do with a prefinished plank floor would be to recoat the surface several times after it has been installed. It sort of defeats the purpose of prefinished, and you may also find that these durable conversion finishes are difficult to get any kind of finish to stick to them.
How To Sand Wood Floors Like a Professional – Without Leaving Machine Marks!
This eBook will be cheap insurance when it comes to sanding your wood floors. This is a must read before you pick up that floor sander. It may save your floor from a fate worse than death. When pulling around that heavy floor sander, you need to think about gouging or sanding your floor unevenly, I will teach you how to make a perfectly flat floor. I will also teach you how to sand to ensure when you apply stain that it blends evenly. If you want to have a beautiful wood floor, you need to know how to sand extraordinarily well. Any mistakes you make will be highlighted on your once beautiful wood floor. I will not teach you the big box store “1, 2, 3 and you’re done” – this is a professional guide to sanding your wood floor. I will also teach you the inner workings of a drum sander. You will learn how to prepare your drum sander so that it won’t leave those dreadful chatter marks all over your living room floor. You will be able to select the right kind of sandpaper for the job – every job is different. When you work with your edger, you will know how to avoid those ugly roller marks. Most importantly, if you read this eBook, you will be able to do a perfect sanding job that will impress your family and friends.
I always start off by going over the whole floor on my hands and knees. This is only way to check an old floor for split boards and broken top grooves. I may find at this point that the floor is just too thin or damaged to handle the extensive sanding process that a stained floor needs. This is the time to decline a job. Before you end up with bad results, and every body blames each other. Just remember in all the small claims court cases that I have served as an expert witness, it was assumed that the floor mechanic alone had the expertise to determine if a floor could be sanded with good results.
Now if you are a amateur and have never done a stained floor before, and you think you are going to simply rent a floor sanding machine and sand the floor yourself, please consider this. I have another (free) article that discusses in detail whether you should consider doing this rather difficult job yourself. You might instead, hire the pro to do the floor sanding only. Have a professional follow the prep for staining as I will describe in this article. If he won’t do all the details I mention, do the final vibrator and buffer sanding yourself (and this you CAN do, and they do rent good equipment for this).
This way you can be sure that all the proper steps were taken to prepare your floor for the wood stain. This article will be cheap insurance really. You will know exactly what to look for after a floor is sanded, (before you pay) so as to avoid even this contractor leaving machine marks. Might have him read this article, so that he knows, you know. A proper “sand only” job will cost about a buck a square foot or less.
A well sanded floor will be a breeze to stain and finish, and this article will save you from hiring the wrong contractor. I do have another article on how to stain a floor, and another on how to apply polyurethane to a floor. These tasks are often done better by the knowledgeable amateur as opposed to the so-called pro who is in a hurry to make money.
Can it be Sanded?
I always start off by going over the whole floor on my hands and knees. This is only way to check an old floor for split boards and broken top grooves. I may find at this point that the floor is just too thin or damaged to handle the extensive sanding process that a stained floor needs. This is the time to decline a job. Before you end up with bad results, and every body blames each other. Just remember in all the small claims court cases that I have served as an expert witness, it was assumed that the floor mechanic alone had the expertise to determine if a floor could be sanded with good results.
Now if you are a amateur and have never done a stained floor before, and you think you are going to simply rent a floor sanding machine and sand the floor yourself, please consider this. I have another (free) article that discusses in detail whether you should consider doing this rather difficult job yourself. You might instead, hire the pro to do the floor sanding only. Have a professional follow the prep for staining as I will describe in this article. If he won’t do all the details I mention, do the final vibrator and buffer sanding yourself (and this you CAN do, and they do rent good equipment for this).
This way you can be sure that all the proper steps were taken to prepare your floor for the wood stain. This article will be cheap insurance really. You will know exactly what to look for after a floor is sanded, (before you pay) so as to avoid even this contractor leaving machine marks. Might have him read this article, so that he knows, you know. A proper “sand only” job will cost about a buck a square foot or less.
A well sanded floor will be a breeze to stain and finish, and this article will save you from hiring the wrong contractor. I do have another article on how to stain a floor, and another on how to apply polyurethane to a floor. These tasks are often done better by the knowledgeable amateur as opposed to the so-called pro who is in a hurry to make money.
Remove Various Stains and Smells From Wood Floors
Stains and spots compromise the beauty of your wood floors. If your floors have blemishes from things such as pet urine, coffee, blood, ink, latex paint or chewing gum, this eBook is a must read. You will learn how to remove stains without doing the difficult and intimadating carpentry involved in a floor wood repair.
Each stain is unique and affects the wood finish differently. A stain needs to be treated with the proper wood bleach, applicator and sandpaper. This step-by-step guide explains the difference between the three types of wood bleach and how to prepare your bleach solution. In this eBook, you will get to know about the various stain types. You will learn the techniques required to remove stains that are embedded in your floor finish.
This eBook was written for those people who don’t mind puttering around touching up a floor finish. As long as you follow my directions closely, you will see how easy it actually is to remove a stain. Besides, if you have an old floor that is stained, it is worth the read to learn how removing those ugly spots will bring back your gorgeous floor!
The most common question I am asked is how to I remove dark urine stains from hardwood floors. Read this and you’ll find out how do this and take care of other accidental spills on your floors. I think I’ve covered it all in this article.
Most of the floor stains people are concerned about are pet urine. It seems that when we bring our pets in from the cold, we cannot convince them that the floor is now NOT their toilet. But you MUST convince them of this or your lovely hardwood floors will be a stinky and stained mess.
Coffee, juice and ink will also penetrate the wood finish if left for hours, and in some cases, stain the wood itself. But before you go ahead and read this, you should find out if the stain is just on the surface of the floor finish. A quick read of my floor maintenance articles (it’s free) in this site will show you the safe way to clean your particular floor’s finish. You may be lucky and find that a spot cleaning with a good pH neutral cleaner is all that is need to remove the stain. But, if you find that your floor finish is so unsound that it gets stained with least provocation, it may be best to sand and refinish the entire floor and take care of the stains at the same time.
If you find that it is only the floor finish itself has been stained you can use an extra fine nylon rubbing pad to assist in removing enough finish to get the mark out. Some solvents like mineral spirits will remove some crayon marks or black heel marks if the water based cleaner won’t work. Lacquer thinner will remove nail polish but it will in some cases remove the floor finish too. Blot the spill with a white rag and small amounts of lacquer thinner in this case. There are products like Goof-Off that will remove latex paint splatters, and some old adhesives. And the trick to removing gum off floors is to chill it with a special spray product, so that it will chip off. For deeper stains in the finish you can even remove some more of the stained floor finish with fine 120 grit sandpaper. In a lot of these cases you will have to touch up the finish. So be sure to read the second part of my floor maintenance article to determine just what this floor finish is, so the touch up will blend well. But if you find that the stain is well into the wood itself, read on, I will describe the 3 kinds of wood bleaches and their best applications.
How you remove or rather “bleach out” the stain that you find deep in the wood depends on what caused the stain in the first place.
There are three different kinds of wood bleach and they each act on different stains. For all these bleaches you will need to remove all the finish from the wood surface, either by sanding or chemical stripping. You can read about chemically stripping wood floors also in this web site.
While you are sanding the finish off, this will give you a chance to see how deep the stain is. If you are really lucky you can sand enough wood off so that most if not all of the stain out. Use 80 grit sandpaper, and finish with 100-120 grit. I will usually use a wood scraper for the initial removal, but will always finish up with hand sanding anyway. But you will have to learn how to sharpen a scraper to razor fineness before you use it on your smooth floor. That’s another subject for another time. Use sandpaper if you cannot sharpen a wood scraper well. Hand sanding just takes a little more time, but does the same job.
Most importantly, if you are in the process of sanding the entire floor, you must complete all your sanding down to the finest grit. Then carefully work on the stained areas. If you try to further sand the floor after the bleaching, this may remove enough wood to take the bleached effect out. That’s because bleaching doesn’t really remove the stain, it simply changes the dark discolored wood, to an off white. The bleached areas will however survive a 100 grit screening of the floor as the final step before applying the floor finish.
The first wood bleach is oxalic acid, in liquid or crystal form. This will remove most water and iron rust stains. Apply a strong solution and wait several hours or overnight if needed. Wash off wood surface with lots of water, with a bit of baking soda to neutralize the acid. A lot of deck brighteners have oxalic acid in them. But I like to buy my oxalic acid in it’s pure crystal. In this dry form, it’s highly toxic, that’s why it’s getting harder to obtain these days. Make sure you don’t inhale any of the dry dusty residue on the floor. That’s why you have to wash it off quite well, before you fine sand that spot again.
The next bleach to try is a chlorine bleach. This will remove most dye stains, caused by grape juice, blood or coffee and tea spills. The weakest form of this bleach is regular laundry bleach. It’s worth a try , but it may be ineffective. Better to use swimming pool bleach, called Shock Treatment (dry calcium or sodium hypochlorite). Mix the crystals with hot water, until solution is saturated. Apply to the spot and it should work right away, but try twice if needed and wait overnight. Neutralize the bleached area with vinegar, so it doesn’t ooze chlorine droplets after the wood is finished. Wash it all off with lots of distilled water and let the wood again dry overnight, before refinishing, if it did work. Sometimes even this bleach will take too much color out of the wood, and you will need to replace some of the wood’s tone with a light wood stain, before you replace the finish.
And lastly for organic stains, like urine and feces, your only hope is to use hydrogen peroxide and sodium hydroxide, in a very strong and dangerous concentration ( 27% ). Klean-Srtip is one of these products that’s readily available in North America, and comes with good instructions. Visit their web site at www.kleanstrip.com for info on how to use this stuff. You generally have to mix the two parts of these bleaches together, but this contains it own neutralizer, so only a washing up with water may be needed after. Click on the product button at the Klean-Strip site, then the wood bleach link. This last type of bleach will always turn the dark spots to an off white color, which you will then have to blend in with a light colored wood stain to match the color of your finished wood floor.
Incidentally this last bleach is the method we used to use when we wanted a snowy white floor. I used to install a prime grade of maple and bleach any remaining color out of it, and then apply a clear lacquer floor finish. But there are better ways to achieve this effect using a ring porous wood like oak, and white pigment staining it instead. Read more about this in my floor staining article. There is some concern that this type of strong wood bleach weakens and softens the wood surface just a bit. So never bleach the whole floor, just the dark affected areas.
And for really severely urine stained floors you may have to use a darkly colored pigmented wiping stain to color the whole floor, after the bleaching. This may still not blend in very well, but it will look better that no stain treatment at all. Don’t be tempted to skip the bleaching in this case and just pigment stain only, the dark spots will be even more visible unless they are bleached out first. Be sure to read my articles on the sanding and then staining of a wood floor. It is a really very complex job, if you wish an even color, and smooth finish.
All these bleaches are water based, so they will raise the grain and make the wood rough. Be sure to let the wet wood dry overnight. And do be careful when you sand it smooth the next day, so as not to sand out the bleached effect. Do the final sanding with just a little pressure and use 120 grit sandpaper, just until the wood is smooth. Or go over the whole floor gently with a 100 grit screen on a floor buffer, keeping the handle low, to ease the pressure.
The smell that goes along with urine and feces stains could be eliminated first or later, and for that I will refer you to the good folks at the Cleaning center at www.cleanreport.com. Don Aslett has written a good book about this very odoriferous subject, called Pet Cleanup Made Easy. You may find you have to use their odor treatments (their X-O treatment works miracles) before and after the bleaching. The odor may be coming from under the floor, on the baseboard and even on or in the wall in some cases.
In the most extreme cases of urine soaked hardwood, we have had to remove the entire hardwood floor and then apply a stain killer paint to the top and bottom (if you have access from below) of the subfloor. Then we laid down a 15 pound roof felt and installed a new hardwood floor. Allowing several days to a week between these tasks helps the odors dry up, and the shellac paint to cure.
This is much the same process I personally had to do when someone died in a room and bled for 20 hours into the hardwood, and softwood subfloor. I had to get this room completely odor free. In this morbid case I removed all of the old hardwood floor. I also had to remove part of the pine subfloor that was blood stained and replaced it with plywood. In addition I painted the floor joists and the top of the ceiling between the joists with the shellac paint before I replaced the subfloor. And then of course I had to install a new hardwood floor. All in all an expensive contract for one small room. I hope you are not tackling such a grim task, but we floor guys are here to fix any wood floor damage, no matter what the cause.
The alternative to bleaching out stains is to repair them out. Click on the wood floor repair article (it’s free). This is a must read before you begin bleaching the wood. You may find that if you have the basic carpentry skills, a wood floor repair of the stained area suits you better. This is what most professional do, as we charge by the hour for repairs. We cannot always experiment with wood bleaches on our client’s floors. We must have a certain and predictable time to completion. And in our case removal and repairs are often the quickest way to go, but not always the cheapest.
I really wrote this article for those who are intimidated by the carpentry involved in floor repair, but wouldn’t mind puttering around touching up a floor finish. I can and will do any floor treatment as a professional floor mechanic. But a lot of times I will simply coach a client through the bleaching process and come back later to finish the floors.
Just remember bleaching doesn’t remove the stain, it just changes it color. You will, in most cases have to re-color the wood with a wood stain, before you apply a floor finish. If you have sanded the entire floor down to the bare wood, and then bleached some areas, you can determine what the final color of the bare wood will be by splashing some mineral spirits on nearby boards. Mineral spirits (paint thinner) will show the color of a clear finish, but will dry up without raising the grain. Good luck, it’s a tricky job, but well worth it to save an old floor.
Each stain is unique and affects the wood finish differently. A stain needs to be treated with the proper wood bleach, applicator and sandpaper. This step-by-step guide explains the difference between the three types of wood bleach and how to prepare your bleach solution. In this eBook, you will get to know about the various stain types. You will learn the techniques required to remove stains that are embedded in your floor finish.
This eBook was written for those people who don’t mind puttering around touching up a floor finish. As long as you follow my directions closely, you will see how easy it actually is to remove a stain. Besides, if you have an old floor that is stained, it is worth the read to learn how removing those ugly spots will bring back your gorgeous floor!
The most common question I am asked is how to I remove dark urine stains from hardwood floors. Read this and you’ll find out how do this and take care of other accidental spills on your floors. I think I’ve covered it all in this article.
Most of the floor stains people are concerned about are pet urine. It seems that when we bring our pets in from the cold, we cannot convince them that the floor is now NOT their toilet. But you MUST convince them of this or your lovely hardwood floors will be a stinky and stained mess.
Coffee, juice and ink will also penetrate the wood finish if left for hours, and in some cases, stain the wood itself. But before you go ahead and read this, you should find out if the stain is just on the surface of the floor finish. A quick read of my floor maintenance articles (it’s free) in this site will show you the safe way to clean your particular floor’s finish. You may be lucky and find that a spot cleaning with a good pH neutral cleaner is all that is need to remove the stain. But, if you find that your floor finish is so unsound that it gets stained with least provocation, it may be best to sand and refinish the entire floor and take care of the stains at the same time.
If you find that it is only the floor finish itself has been stained you can use an extra fine nylon rubbing pad to assist in removing enough finish to get the mark out. Some solvents like mineral spirits will remove some crayon marks or black heel marks if the water based cleaner won’t work. Lacquer thinner will remove nail polish but it will in some cases remove the floor finish too. Blot the spill with a white rag and small amounts of lacquer thinner in this case. There are products like Goof-Off that will remove latex paint splatters, and some old adhesives. And the trick to removing gum off floors is to chill it with a special spray product, so that it will chip off. For deeper stains in the finish you can even remove some more of the stained floor finish with fine 120 grit sandpaper. In a lot of these cases you will have to touch up the finish. So be sure to read the second part of my floor maintenance article to determine just what this floor finish is, so the touch up will blend well. But if you find that the stain is well into the wood itself, read on, I will describe the 3 kinds of wood bleaches and their best applications.
How you remove or rather “bleach out” the stain that you find deep in the wood depends on what caused the stain in the first place.
There are three different kinds of wood bleach and they each act on different stains. For all these bleaches you will need to remove all the finish from the wood surface, either by sanding or chemical stripping. You can read about chemically stripping wood floors also in this web site.
While you are sanding the finish off, this will give you a chance to see how deep the stain is. If you are really lucky you can sand enough wood off so that most if not all of the stain out. Use 80 grit sandpaper, and finish with 100-120 grit. I will usually use a wood scraper for the initial removal, but will always finish up with hand sanding anyway. But you will have to learn how to sharpen a scraper to razor fineness before you use it on your smooth floor. That’s another subject for another time. Use sandpaper if you cannot sharpen a wood scraper well. Hand sanding just takes a little more time, but does the same job.
Most importantly, if you are in the process of sanding the entire floor, you must complete all your sanding down to the finest grit. Then carefully work on the stained areas. If you try to further sand the floor after the bleaching, this may remove enough wood to take the bleached effect out. That’s because bleaching doesn’t really remove the stain, it simply changes the dark discolored wood, to an off white. The bleached areas will however survive a 100 grit screening of the floor as the final step before applying the floor finish.
The first wood bleach is oxalic acid, in liquid or crystal form. This will remove most water and iron rust stains. Apply a strong solution and wait several hours or overnight if needed. Wash off wood surface with lots of water, with a bit of baking soda to neutralize the acid. A lot of deck brighteners have oxalic acid in them. But I like to buy my oxalic acid in it’s pure crystal. In this dry form, it’s highly toxic, that’s why it’s getting harder to obtain these days. Make sure you don’t inhale any of the dry dusty residue on the floor. That’s why you have to wash it off quite well, before you fine sand that spot again.
The next bleach to try is a chlorine bleach. This will remove most dye stains, caused by grape juice, blood or coffee and tea spills. The weakest form of this bleach is regular laundry bleach. It’s worth a try , but it may be ineffective. Better to use swimming pool bleach, called Shock Treatment (dry calcium or sodium hypochlorite). Mix the crystals with hot water, until solution is saturated. Apply to the spot and it should work right away, but try twice if needed and wait overnight. Neutralize the bleached area with vinegar, so it doesn’t ooze chlorine droplets after the wood is finished. Wash it all off with lots of distilled water and let the wood again dry overnight, before refinishing, if it did work. Sometimes even this bleach will take too much color out of the wood, and you will need to replace some of the wood’s tone with a light wood stain, before you replace the finish.
And lastly for organic stains, like urine and feces, your only hope is to use hydrogen peroxide and sodium hydroxide, in a very strong and dangerous concentration ( 27% ). Klean-Srtip is one of these products that’s readily available in North America, and comes with good instructions. Visit their web site at www.kleanstrip.com for info on how to use this stuff. You generally have to mix the two parts of these bleaches together, but this contains it own neutralizer, so only a washing up with water may be needed after. Click on the product button at the Klean-Strip site, then the wood bleach link. This last type of bleach will always turn the dark spots to an off white color, which you will then have to blend in with a light colored wood stain to match the color of your finished wood floor.
Incidentally this last bleach is the method we used to use when we wanted a snowy white floor. I used to install a prime grade of maple and bleach any remaining color out of it, and then apply a clear lacquer floor finish. But there are better ways to achieve this effect using a ring porous wood like oak, and white pigment staining it instead. Read more about this in my floor staining article. There is some concern that this type of strong wood bleach weakens and softens the wood surface just a bit. So never bleach the whole floor, just the dark affected areas.
And for really severely urine stained floors you may have to use a darkly colored pigmented wiping stain to color the whole floor, after the bleaching. This may still not blend in very well, but it will look better that no stain treatment at all. Don’t be tempted to skip the bleaching in this case and just pigment stain only, the dark spots will be even more visible unless they are bleached out first. Be sure to read my articles on the sanding and then staining of a wood floor. It is a really very complex job, if you wish an even color, and smooth finish.
All these bleaches are water based, so they will raise the grain and make the wood rough. Be sure to let the wet wood dry overnight. And do be careful when you sand it smooth the next day, so as not to sand out the bleached effect. Do the final sanding with just a little pressure and use 120 grit sandpaper, just until the wood is smooth. Or go over the whole floor gently with a 100 grit screen on a floor buffer, keeping the handle low, to ease the pressure.
The smell that goes along with urine and feces stains could be eliminated first or later, and for that I will refer you to the good folks at the Cleaning center at www.cleanreport.com. Don Aslett has written a good book about this very odoriferous subject, called Pet Cleanup Made Easy. You may find you have to use their odor treatments (their X-O treatment works miracles) before and after the bleaching. The odor may be coming from under the floor, on the baseboard and even on or in the wall in some cases.
In the most extreme cases of urine soaked hardwood, we have had to remove the entire hardwood floor and then apply a stain killer paint to the top and bottom (if you have access from below) of the subfloor. Then we laid down a 15 pound roof felt and installed a new hardwood floor. Allowing several days to a week between these tasks helps the odors dry up, and the shellac paint to cure.
This is much the same process I personally had to do when someone died in a room and bled for 20 hours into the hardwood, and softwood subfloor. I had to get this room completely odor free. In this morbid case I removed all of the old hardwood floor. I also had to remove part of the pine subfloor that was blood stained and replaced it with plywood. In addition I painted the floor joists and the top of the ceiling between the joists with the shellac paint before I replaced the subfloor. And then of course I had to install a new hardwood floor. All in all an expensive contract for one small room. I hope you are not tackling such a grim task, but we floor guys are here to fix any wood floor damage, no matter what the cause.
The alternative to bleaching out stains is to repair them out. Click on the wood floor repair article (it’s free). This is a must read before you begin bleaching the wood. You may find that if you have the basic carpentry skills, a wood floor repair of the stained area suits you better. This is what most professional do, as we charge by the hour for repairs. We cannot always experiment with wood bleaches on our client’s floors. We must have a certain and predictable time to completion. And in our case removal and repairs are often the quickest way to go, but not always the cheapest.
I really wrote this article for those who are intimidated by the carpentry involved in floor repair, but wouldn’t mind puttering around touching up a floor finish. I can and will do any floor treatment as a professional floor mechanic. But a lot of times I will simply coach a client through the bleaching process and come back later to finish the floors.
Just remember bleaching doesn’t remove the stain, it just changes it color. You will, in most cases have to re-color the wood with a wood stain, before you apply a floor finish. If you have sanded the entire floor down to the bare wood, and then bleached some areas, you can determine what the final color of the bare wood will be by splashing some mineral spirits on nearby boards. Mineral spirits (paint thinner) will show the color of a clear finish, but will dry up without raising the grain. Good luck, it’s a tricky job, but well worth it to save an old floor. Installing Hardwood Floors on Concrete Slabs
While I rarely have to install a wood strip floor on concrete here in the North East, a lot of you have houses built with a concrete slab as a subfloor. I must say, you are lucky to lack a basement, it has just been a depository for junk in my case. A slab on grade subfloor presents a lot of concerns when trying to install some types of wood floor. And if it’s a fairly new home it may have one of those hydronic-heating systems installed right in the slab. I’ve decided to write this article siting the best choices, down to the worst choices, in each category of floor types. You may find that some of the worst choices are the most commonly used methods in the construction industry, but I cannot help that.
The first things to consider if you want a wood floor on the concrete are flatness, and moisture incursion. Now don’t confuse flatness with levelness, you cannot simply put a 2-foot level on a small patch of bare concrete and say it’s flat enough for a wood floor. If you are planning on installing any type of glue down hardwood floor product you must see the entire concrete surface, and make sure that it is flat within 3/16″ in a 10 foot radius or 1/8″ within a 6 foot radius. The way you do this is to take a 6 or 10-foot straight edge and place it in various areas on the subfloor. It will be very clear where the dips are. If there are just a few dips, you should fill them in with a non-shrinking mortar, available at you local concrete supply store.
The Quikrete ® company make a variety of repair products that have a good track record for this use. Go to their web site or buy their book Build and Repair with Concrete. I highly recommend the book if you want to do any concrete repair work yourself, and Don Knotts, one of my favorite actors is on the cover, to give the book that friendly reassuring look. The Quikrete web site and the book also give detailed instructions on how to apply a floor-leveling compound. These floor levelers made by Quikrete are cement-based. Don’t confuse them with the inferior gypsum based products that have a checkered past (lots of cracking and adhesion failures). You can see why a good flooring contractor wants to see the entire concrete, in order to give you an accurate estimate. We don’t have X-Ray vision, we can’t look through carpet.
The first things to consider if you want a wood floor on the concrete are flatness, and moisture incursion. Now don’t confuse flatness with levelness, you cannot simply put a 2-foot level on a small patch of bare concrete and say it’s flat enough for a wood floor. If you are planning on installing any type of glue down hardwood floor product you must see the entire concrete surface, and make sure that it is flat within 3/16″ in a 10 foot radius or 1/8″ within a 6 foot radius. The way you do this is to take a 6 or 10-foot straight edge and place it in various areas on the subfloor. It will be very clear where the dips are. If there are just a few dips, you should fill them in with a non-shrinking mortar, available at you local concrete supply store.
The Quikrete ® company make a variety of repair products that have a good track record for this use. Go to their web site or buy their book Build and Repair with Concrete. I highly recommend the book if you want to do any concrete repair work yourself, and Don Knotts, one of my favorite actors is on the cover, to give the book that friendly reassuring look. The Quikrete web site and the book also give detailed instructions on how to apply a floor-leveling compound. These floor levelers made by Quikrete are cement-based. Don’t confuse them with the inferior gypsum based products that have a checkered past (lots of cracking and adhesion failures). You can see why a good flooring contractor wants to see the entire concrete, in order to give you an accurate estimate. We don’t have X-Ray vision, we can’t look through carpet.
How to apply oil based polyurethane WITHOUT the pits and bubbles.
I promised a novice floor guy in New Jersey to write this article. He’s been having quite a problem, (and I’m sure customer complaints) because he has been leaving bubbles in the last coat of polyurethane. He would like a quick fix, but I’m afraid both you and he may be a bit surprised by the length and detail in this article. I sure that you will be satisfied that I covered all the problems associated with this fine and durable finish.
Polyurethane’s official name is actually Oil Modified Polyurethane, or OMP or OMU. That’s because it is mainly made up of oil (safflower or Soya oil), some metallic dryers (cobalt and manganese) and lastly some polyurethane resin to give it hardness once it dries. It’s also referred to as urethane, or even trade names like Varathane. You can be sure you are buying an OMU when the directions on the can suggest clean up with mineral spirits. Water based finishes are also called urethanes in some cases, but I will not talk about these finishes here. They have a completely different application method. It may become confusing when water based finishes call themselves urethane. But the water base finishes always suggest a soap and water clean up. Whereas oil based polyurethane’s require mineral spirits, naphtha or paint thinner for clean up.
But lets start from the beginning. If you are sanding a floor for a clear finish (some call it a natural finish) you must sand the floor at least 3 times. Start out with 36-grit paper, then 60 then 100 grit. If the floor is to be stained you must skip less grits and go with 36, 60, 80, then 100 or 120. The edges must be sanded thrice at least, with the final edging done with a 1/2-sheet vibrator sander with 80-100-grit paper. And for stained floors you must screen the bare wood with 100 grit screens just before staining. I’m not going to give you a sanding lesson in this article that will be for another time. Suffice it to say if your floor is not properly sanded clean and fine, your finish will always be rough. Oh, that’s why I always use 36-grit sandpaper on old and new floors. On old floor I need to remove ALL the old finish with the first rough sanding, no exceptions. And on new floors I want to level the boards quickly and easily.
So now that you have a nicely sanded floor, lets start and say you are doing a clear finish with 3 coats of polyurethane, what is the best way to proceed. First, sweep the floor if it is really full of dust, as this may be too much for your vacuum. Vacuum with really good industrial machine. It would be worth it to rent one for the whole job. There will be large particles of sandpaper grit on the floor, and your household vacuum won’t do the job. Be sure to use the wand of the vacuum to get into all the corners. Keep in mind, it’s best to go over the floor twice, this will ensure the floor is dust free. By the way, you need to finish your sanding the day you do the finish. Never leave a fine sanded floor overnight, any dampness in the air may raise the grain, especially in the summer.
But lets start from the beginning. If you are sanding a floor for a clear finish (some call it a natural finish) you must sand the floor at least 3 times. Start out with 36-grit paper, then 60 then 100 grit. If the floor is to be stained you must skip less grits and go with 36, 60, 80, then 100 or 120. The edges must be sanded thrice at least, with the final edging done with a 1/2-sheet vibrator sander with 80-100-grit paper. And for stained floors you must screen the bare wood with 100 grit screens just before staining. I’m not going to give you a sanding lesson in this article that will be for another time. Suffice it to say if your floor is not properly sanded clean and fine, your finish will always be rough. Oh, that’s why I always use 36-grit sandpaper on old and new floors. On old floor I need to remove ALL the old finish with the first rough sanding, no exceptions. And on new floors I want to level the boards quickly and easily.
So now that you have a nicely sanded floor, lets start and say you are doing a clear finish with 3 coats of polyurethane, what is the best way to proceed. First, sweep the floor if it is really full of dust, as this may be too much for your vacuum. Vacuum with really good industrial machine. It would be worth it to rent one for the whole job. There will be large particles of sandpaper grit on the floor, and your household vacuum won’t do the job. Be sure to use the wand of the vacuum to get into all the corners. Keep in mind, it’s best to go over the floor twice, this will ensure the floor is dust free. By the way, you need to finish your sanding the day you do the finish. Never leave a fine sanded floor overnight, any dampness in the air may raise the grain, especially in the summer.