Floor sanding - do I replace floorboards?

Davewils82

Hi all,

I'm about to embark on sanding down the living room floor boards (which were previously under carpet) and trying to go with bare wood.

I've taken up the carpet and underlay, removed all the edging and got rid of the fireplace.

On inspection it seems that alot of the original boards have been replaced some time ago and, in a few places, not fantastically well:


The main issue is two boards in one line that are quite a bit narrower than the original floor, leaving a 2cm gap either side.  The other problems are boards that have been cut too short and leaving big gaps. 

What's my best course of action? Should I replace the boards with better fitting ones?

naf123

Is that a suspended timber floor . Isn't it going to be freezing in the winter ?

FaceHead

If you want a bare floorboard look I would recommend an engineered wood floor or similar. 

If you're intent on having the floorboards on show, then they need to be decent - clearly the last person didn't do an adequate job for your purposes, as they were going to lay carpet. 

Regardless of what floor covering (or not) you go with, if it's an uninsulated suspended timber floor, you should take the opportunity to insulate - either from above or below, depending on how much of it is coming up. 

macman

I've seen a lot worse than that. Any gaps can simply be filled, just ensure that you knock all the nail heads below the surface before you start the sanding process.
If you don't like the result after sanding, it's only going to cost you the hire charge for a day after all.

SandyShores

We sanded the floor in our first house and it was absolutely freezing.  I ended up trying to fill the gaps with string and glue, but it was just so drafty.  naf123 and Facehead are giving you good advice I think.  After the experience I had, I would definitely have carpeted and kept it cosy.

joe90mitch

We had ours done, probably in a similar condition. Happy enough with the finished product, we had guys in and I thought they'd have been more precise with replacement pieces, we have a few with gaps like yours. On larger gaps the norm (and they did this) is to drive slivers of pine in before sanding down. 

Overall happy, haven't actively noticed draughts from them, a few gaps between boards have opened up slightly,I suppose I could look into a better filler. 

Since then I've seen original floorboards being left in skips where houses are being gutted, wish with hindsight I could have sourced some of these prior the sanding, would have matched more.

If you sand them and the newer boards don't match in colour, I guess you could always stain them

Grenage

You can buy bags of pine slivers for filling gaps in floorboards.

You have two choices when it comes to floorboards - you can go for a perfect match across the whole floor, or you can go for the rustic mismatch.

We'll probably be going back to floorboards in our living room, but I'll put solid insulation between the joists if we do so.

[Deleted User]

We did our landing, it was all tongue and grove and the same colour but we were going to calk the joins however we stained it all before varnishing as the wood was a light colour. We now have a nice deep colour. We didn't calk the joins in the end.

But when we hired the sander, we taped up all the doors leading off the area. Even with a dust bag there was a lot of dust, so dust masks a must. Obviously banged in all the nail heads. Took a while to clean up sufficiently.

Bendy_House

As said before, Dave - if this is a suspended ground floor with a vented void underneath, expect hellish draughts.

I don't know if you've been reading the news recently, but the world is in a dodgy place, and the new forms of home heating are going to require (a) high levels of insulation and (b) to be pretty much air-tight (within reason...)

You'd be nuts to do this floor without consideration for this. You will almost certainly regret it bigly.

Two birds with one largish stone - remove the skirtings, and lift all these floorboards. Add insulation between the joists below. This can be rigid 'Celotex' stuff (good, and even 2" will be fine) or even simple 'Jablite' expanded-polystyrene type (adequate - 2 or 3"). It's as simple as cutting panels of the stuff using an extending-blade craft knife or other suitable sharp knife (I think you can get purpose-made types), so's it's a reasonably snug fit between the joists - ie tight enough to not fall out. Cut a few rows worth in advance, and lay them out. Then fit them one at a time, running a thin bead of adhesive foam along the edges before tapping then down flush with the joist tops - make sure there's enough foam to seal them. Add foam, too, between each piece as yopu lay them to make it all continuous, and absolutely seal with foam around the whole room perimeter. Make that floor both insulated and draughtproof before replacing the floorboards.

Then relay the boards, tapping them tightly together to remove as much T&G gap as possible, and spacing the offcut pieces at random at the board-to-wall end so's you don't get joints lining up. At the far end, finish off by adding a sliced-down board (bought new unless you can find reclaimed) to fill whatever cumulative gap has appeared. Sand, stain/varnish and replace (renew?) the skirting boards.

Yes, this is a lot more work, but will be absolutely worth doing.

FreeBear

Bendy_House said: Two birds with one largish stone - remove the skirtings, and lift all these floorboards. Add insulation between the joists below. This can be rigid 'Celotex' stuff (good, and even 2" will be fine) or even simple 'Jablite' expanded-polystyrene type (adequate - 2 or 3"). It's as simple as cutting panels of the stuff using an extending-blade craft knife or other suitable sharp knife (I think you can get purpose-made types)

I use a sharp kitchen knife (Kitchen Devils brand) - Minimal dust and a nice clean cut. For the price difference between Jablite and Celotex, go for the Celotex every time. Just watch the clearance under the joists and don't compromise the under-floor ventilation.

Davewils82

Just to update this post. It ended up looking really good. However the floor finish isn't quite as I expected. 

I've used ronseal 'diamond hard' dark oak and it looks great but when I've visited other homes in the past, it seems like their wood floors have had some sort of 'coating' on them, whereas mine just look like stained boards.

Not sure if there is another product I should be putting over the top?