How To Repair Scratches and Squeaks in your Hardwood Flooring
I have wood flooring all over my house (except the Kitchen) I find it attractive and easy to clean, and it just adds something that carpet just can’t provide. But!!! …and there’s always a but if you have older hardwood floors I’m sure you can relate to the frustration of having creaky boards, nails that simply pop up from the floor, and those unsightly scratches. These issues can be fixed and luckily, it doesn’t take much work to fix these problems to get your floors looking like new again.
Squeaky floors
If you have a new house it’s less likely your floor will squeak, there are however a number of reason this can happen settling of your house over time, expansion and shrinkage of the wood in varying climates (Summer/Fall), or simply wear and tear from foot traffic over time.
Some tips I found over at LifeSpy might help.
1. For a quick fix, you can use talcum powder and seep it down until it gets into the nooks and crannies of the squeaky floorboard. A friend suggested using borax powder. This way, you also have insect repellent too.
2. Sometimes, squeaks can be eliminated by merely pounding the floorboard nails back into place. Here are some hammering safety tips to save your floorboards from pound marks.
3. For a more DIY fix, your have bring out some hardware for this one. This is sometimes necessary when the old nail hole has come real loose and stripped that the nail can’t bite into the wood anymore. You might have to nail it down on another area. For such a job, screws with plugs or spiral nails are good for the job.
4. If you really want to revitalize your wood flooring, it might be better to contact a professional to work on them.
For a more permanent solution you’ll need to take out the drill and drill new trim screws into the 
floorboards at a slight angle. The angle adds a little more grip and will help secure your noisy board to the subfloor, you may also want to look at a Counter-Snap Kit which uses a special breakaway screws that once at a certain depth, the tops break off, leaving you with a perfectly countersunk screw. A trip to your local DIY Store and they can give you advise and pricing on these. All that left after this is to use some wood putty to fill in any hole you may find.
Scratches and Blemishes
Ok we have two different types of scratches “superficial and deep”, a “superficial scratch,” can be easily touched up with a brown crayon and a mixture of lemon juice and olive oil, if you pop over to eHow they have a really good tutorial on how to do this. One tip I got from somebody (I can’t remember) is if the scratch barely breaks through the wood, rubbing a walnut against the grain can sometimes work.
Now for the hard bit this will require a bit more work, so take a trip to your local DIY store and get some knee pads and sandpaper. We have two options here if the board is not to damaged you should be able to get by with a good sanding, washing, and reapplication of the wood stain - You’ll find a good guide on how to do this at wikihow.com
If this going to be a challenge and you feel you need to replace the board because of two much damage then pop over to eHow.com for tips on how to replace the board.
One thing I almost forgot if you have spill marks you’ll find a great article here on how to remove them.
Hope this article helps leave a comment if you wish that might help other.
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May 12, 2008 | Flooring
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