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Hardwood floor woes

arcticwoman — Fri, 10 May 2013 08:16:24 -0800

We may have made our already-ruined wood floor worse. How can we fix this, at least temporarily? A couple months ago we bought a 103-year old house with badly damaged hardwood floors. We'll eventually get them repaired and refinished, but not for at least a year (other fixes have higher priorities).

A few days ago we cleaned the grime off the bedroom floors with some scrub brushes and diluted Murphy's Oil, and they look much improved, but when we tried the same strategy on the dining room we got different results. It looks like somehow we've stripped the finish. Photos here. The blotchy matte part is the "after," the stained but shiny part the "before."

As I said, we can't afford to refinish the floors right now. That said, the stripped floor is ugly, and I'm afraid will be super vulnerable to more stains. Is there a way to temporarily fix this? And how do we give the rest of the room a good clean without stripping the finish off? Assume we know nothing about hardwood floors or home renos.

Reflooring part of a rental property (kitchen and living room).

flibbertigibbet — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:15:40 -0800

My boyfriend owns a house in North Florida that needs to have the floors in the kitchen and living room redone. He rents out the house. He's looking for a good 'middle way': not expensive, but not so cheap that it will have to be replaced soon; nice, but not so nice that it it might get easily damaged by renters (nor ugly, which would lower rent value). N.B.: the price has to include installation since he won't be around to install it himself. Any suggestions for what types of flooring he should look at, especially given N. Florida's climate?

Help me clean my old gross quarry tile

tatiana wishbone — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:09:41 -0800

I recently moved into an older apartment with many quirks and charms. The floor is not one of them. It's quarry tile, like you find in restaurant kitchens, and it is disgusting. At one point it had been sealed or varnished, and the sealant is now peeling off. The grey grout looks like someone mashed dirt into it even after it's been scrubbed with Comet. Help! Here is a picture of the floor, freshly mopped. It is actually darker/grosser in real life. Besides the sealant, it also has some lovely tracked in concrete stains, broken tiles, etc. So far, I've used heavy-duty stripper from Home Depot which did a total of nothing. I've scrubbed with Bar Keeper's Friend, Comet, aforementioned stripper, regular old Mr. Clean - nothing can touch this nasty grout or the peeling sealant. Home Depot customer service recommended hydrochloric acid, which I am scared to use because um I spill things a lot and don't particularly want to handle extremely dangerous chemicals if I can avoid it. Is there any way to get this sealer off without using HCl? If I do use it, is this something a person with very few housekeeping skills can do safely? If nothing else, how can I get the grout white or at least not really dirty while it's actually clean?

What is the best way to insulate the floor of my cold flat?

mairuzu — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:47:47 -0800

We live in a first floor flat with an empty space (the entrance to the under-flat car park) below us. Although it's a modern flat with supposedly high insulation, the floor in the lounge seems very cold and draughty and the heating takes ages to warm the place up. I was thinking of using either Therma-foil and / or some high-tog thermal carpet underlay with our carpet on top.

Does therma-foil work?

Should I use a combination of the two?

Any other advice greatly welcomed.

Half-Remembered Quote From Cathedral Floor

Yiggs — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 07:53:48 -0800

Back in 2005, I visited St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York with a friend of mine. Recently he asked if I remembered a quote engraved on the floor, something to the effect of, "Forget the [...], take up the chorus". While this sounds very familiar to me, I can't recall the full quote or the source. I remember it was part of a series of quotes engraved on the floor, mostly from (I believe) 20th-century writers and thinkers. Other than that, I'm stuck.

My back... it hurts! And I'm so tired.

swhitt — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 09:33:48 -0800

Help save our Christmas! My wife and I are sleeping on the basement floor of my parent's house during Christmas week. We've stayed on a queen-sized inflatable mattress before and it is incredibly uncomfortable. Any recommendations for alternatives? We've always had issues sleeping in their basement. They have a pullout couch but the mattress is flat and lumpy. We tried a Queen-sized Aerobed Guest Choice but it is extremely uncomfortable (every movement I make wakes my wife up).

We're going to buy some decent cheap sheets and a blanket (the ones my parents have are old and aren't so comfortable) but we aren't quite sure what else to buy to make our Christmas stay more comfortable. Any suggestions? Bed rolls, sleeping bags, etc. We'll likely use this every time we visit so please share your experiences. Thanks!

Wood floor gunky glue begone

baggers — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 09:56:02 -0800

How do I remove a thin layer of vinyl tile backing glue from a hardwood floor? Mrs Baggers and I recently took the plunge and started tearing up the hideous vinyl tile floor in our kitchen. It came up to reveal... a hardwood floor in pretty good condition. So, we are removing all of the tiles and are going to refinish the wood. However, the tiles left a thin layer of glue that seems impossible to remove. I have tried water (small amounts) and a heat gun to melt it. However, it remains and I don't want it gunking up the sander when we start. What's the easiest way to get the gunky glue off the floor before snading?

Using wood for a shower floor

jameslavelle3 — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:53:13 -0800

I am having my bathroom professionally remodeled and I am strongly considering having the shower floor made out of wood (most likely Teak or Ipe), resting over conventional concrete drainage. Any experience, advice or vendor referrals from people who have done this or from professionals would be appreciated. I'm particularly concerned with the ongoing maintenance and durability compared to traditional pebble or tile shower flooring. Is it worth the elegance and tactile comfort enhancements? We tentatively decided on using wood because we stayed in a fancy resort once which had wood showers and we loved it. We felt that the wood had an attractive balance of non-slip and comfort, as well as a luxurious aesthetic. We feel like other non-slip materials like pebbles with grout are more painful to stand on. Is there some other material that we are overlooking?

Any specific advice on styles (slats vs. grid), wood types, suppliers, etc. would be appreciated. We are in NYC in case it is relevant.

Hardwood floors: can an amateur do a decent job refinishing?

penduluum — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:59:00 -0800

I need some advice about refinishing hardwood floors. Is this something I can do on my own? I've done plenty of research but I want to try and collect input from DIYers with actual experience. I recently bought a house. It was kind of a surprise opportunity, but now I find myself with a nice little place (1940's construction in good repair, double-layer brick, Florida) that I need to put some work into before my girlfriend and I can move in.

The house has oak hardwood floors that were covered in carpet for at least 15-20 years. We thought they looked to be in pretty good repair. Upon pulling up all the old carpet, they were revealed to need more work than we thought. Some termite damage that will need to be filled, some dark staining, etc.

I got a couple quotes for having them refinished. One guy was a high-level craftsman who gave me a lot of noise about working on multi-million dollar homes and being so busy that he can barely fit me in next week, or failing that next year. He wanted $5000 for the job, which given the sq. footage of the house seems exorbitant. The other guy seemed like he knew what he was talking about, but I don't know who he'll actually have crewing on the job and I haven't seen any examples of his work. He wanted $2250.

We had considered trying to refinish them ourselves before we saw the extent of the job we had ahead of us, but being unimpressed with the professionals I've spoken to has put that option back on the table. I have a lot of DIY experience (minor construction projects and plumbing, minor woodworking, etc.) but this is the first house I've owned and while I've worked with wood and sanders a lot, these would be the first floors I worked on. The question is half about saving money but half about assuring that we can have nice-looking floors after this.

We're not moved into the house yet. Is it realistic for me (with help) to try to refinish these floors myself? How difficult is it, really? Sanding, filling small holes, staining, sealing, refinishing? Can an amateur actually do fairly good work at a job like this? And if so: does anybody have advice on how I should go about it? Or a set of full, precise instructions they can direct me to?

Assume I've done enough basic reading to know the major steps involved. And please feel free to ask me any questions if more information is needed. I've read this thread, and if responding to the questions in the first answer would help, I'd be happy to do it.

Second-floor toilet is leaking, can you help me figure out the best course of action regarding the floor?

joshwebb — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:07:20 -0800

Second-floor toilet is leaking, can you help me figure out the best course of action regarding the floor? About two months ago I replaced the toilet, tile and substrate in our second-floor bathroom. Today I noticed two golfball-sized water stains in the ceiling below the bathroom. After removing the toilet, it looks like a quarter of the visible wood is soaked (is this considered to be rotten at this point?) The other 3/4th of the exposed wood is dry, FWIW.

Here's a gross picture of the flange/wax ring with arrows pointing to the wet areas:

http://cl.ly/image/2s1O3Z3O0f2O

I'm not sure how far the wetness extends below the cement-board substrate, but from the little bit of substrate exposed in the photo, the wetness seems to only extend about an inch or so. My hope is that since the spot on the ceiling below is relatively small (especially considering that it has been presumably been leaking for over a month,) that means the damage isn't too terrible.

Do I need to rip everything up and replace the floor? Obviously, I don't want to, but I do want to fix this the right way (even if the right way isn't the easy way.)

Wax On, Wax Off

sarajane — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 14:08:46 -0800

Floor wax alternative to Bruce Liquid Paste Wax with Cleaner? We clean, wax and buff the hardwood floors in our 99 year old house every season. We are preparing to do the fall waxing this weekend. Mr. Jane insists on using Bruce Light N Natural Liquid Wax with Cleaner, because that's what he's been using for 20 years and that's what his parents used on their floors. It works well, but OH THE FUMES! It also seems to be not readily available, due to it's high VOC's (hence the odor). Is there something else we can use that isn't as toxic?

Can we just use plain old paste/liquid wax instead? Do we need to strip the wax first? We have not ever stripped any wax from the floors and don't see any noticeable buildup.

Grating grates!

silsurf — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:45:59 -0800

I recently had the hardwood floors redone. The floor guy did a great job, except dropped the ball in the floor registers, now what? We had our entire house floors refinished. The floor guy said he was going to do the registers, per my request, with flush mounted oak registers.

As it turns out he completely dropped the ball and now we have six holes in our floors and no vent registers.

We are looking at registers such as these to use as drop in instead of flush mount.

Amazon Link

The rub is that we have two openings that I cannot find a register for anywhere online and the places I have called say that I will never find them that size as they are now considered dangerous! So now what?

The over sized holes are 10 x 16 inches and they previously had old crusty floor vents in them that I tossed.

Thanks

Need to clean nail polish stain off hardwood floor, help!

akomom — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 12:08:52 -0800

Doing cleaning for moving out. We had nail polish stain on our hardwood floor. Need advice how to clean it up. I previously googled this problem and followed some tips. We tried using rubbing alcohol and mineral spirits. But it didn't work. THe stain has been 2 months old. We scheduled with the company Stanley Steemer to come clean our hardwood floor. I asked them if they can clean the nail polish, they say that they can not guarantee that it will be clean. Can you give me tips on how to do this? What to buy before Stanley Steemer guys comes. Is there other company that can do this job? Thanks a lot.

Carpet common?

usermac — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:48:06 -0800

So I'd like to know if homes built in the USA in 1958 commonly had wood floors and it is possible this owner added the carpet later. If true we'd have hope that the wood below has possibility for restoration. We checked where we could lifting it up from around vents and in closet and can see wood below it but not enough to see if the real wood is any good. We'd like to remove the carpet ( too old ) and refinish the existing wood or put new wood down upon moving in next week.

My laminate wood flooring creaks and cracks!

Thrillhouse — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 07:39:44 -0800

My laminate wood floor creaks like crazy. How do I fix it? I have a 3 year old Armstrong laminate wood floor. In the winter (lower humidity) it doesn't creak much but in the summer it's like walking on bubble wrap. Drives us crazy sometimes. We've already gone the route of warranty and installer. Each blames the other and we're stuck in the middle. There is enough room along the edges. It's not the gap. The subfloor is not that old and also solid. It's something in the laminate boards themselves. They flex a small amount when you walk on them and creak. Any ideas??

What's the Catch?

amicamentis — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:17:27 -0800

What is the difference in quality between Home Depot/Lowe's porcelain tile and that from a specialty tile store? We are redoing a large kitchen (approximately 250 sq. ft) and are looking for tiling options that are durable and pretty. We visited a tile store this afternoon and saw tiles that ranged from $5 (very basic) to $11 per square foot. We then looked at home depot and saw what we thought as equally nice tile for less than $2 per square foot.

What causes such a difference in price? Is there a significant difference in quality? Has anyone had experience with Home Depot tile? Will we regret getting the cheaper tile?

How can I set up a mildew-free workout space in my unfinished basement?

wexford_arts — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:32:13 -0800

I want to use my unfinished basement as a workout space and have laid down some interlocking foam tiles on the bare concrete floor. However, the floor under the tiles has started showing mildew after a few weeks in place. How can I set up a comfortable workout space in a typically humid but not wet basement without having to lift the tiles every couple of months to scrub out the mildew? * My workout space is about 8 feet by 8 feet, with enough space for floor exercises at one end and a weight bench at the other end of the tiles. I could keep the tiles under the bench all the time (removing them as needed for cleaning) and lay down the free tiles only when I work out. Or I could just give up on tiles beneath the bench, although that would make the transitions for some exercises awkward.

* Would laying down a plastic sheet between floor and tiles help or hurt? I have seen plastic bags left on the floor for a long period also start showing mildew.

* I cannot afford to put in any permanent flooring yet. I need a relatively simple and cheap solution. If the only real solution is real flooring, I guess I'm scrubbing the floor periodically. (I've removed other areas of mildew with cleaner, bleach and elbow grease.)

Is there a way to level a wood floor?

slidell — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:46:29 -0800

Leveling a wooden plank floor to install tile, for dummies. Thanks for everybody's help on my last bathroom design question. I've decided to do it the easy way, and just tile the floor and then install a clawfoot tub. I was hoping to get a little help with the floor tile.

My subfloor is wood planking. It's something like this, except without gaps between the planks or holes in them. It slopes toward a center point, losing about 1" in height over a 30" distance.

What I want to do is to use some sort of self-leveling concrete to fill this, but can you use self-leveling concrete over wood planking? For instance, it sounds like this product (pdf) could be used over wood, with some mesh. Then, this product recommends I put down plywood first, then use the leveler on top of it. But what about little dips underneath the plywood? Is there no risk of bending and cracking there? Then, elsewhere I hear that any self-levelling concrete over wood will crack when the wood expands and contracts. This house was built in the 1890s, so I'm guessing this wood planking is pretty old. I would prefer not to tear it out and put down plywood or somehow level the joists.

My plan was to level the floor with some sort of self-levelling compound, screw down 3/4" plywood, then Ditra, then tile. I have about 1" from the high point of the floor to the surface of the adjacent room's floor. Ideally, I'd use something that could be brought to a feather-edge at the floor's high-point, but at this point, I don't care if the floors are slightly different elevations. StickyCarpet's approach here is my new backup plan.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Installing hydronic radiant floor heating when building a new house?

no bueno — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:28:21 -0800

Installing hydronic radiant floor heating when building a new house? Planning on building a house w/ ICF's and SIP's for the roof. Few questions about hydronic floor heating.

Plan on using solar to heat it, in Boulder, lots of sun, will it be able to keep up?

Is it a bad idea to skip the HVAC and just stick w/ floor heating if we don't want air conditioning? Would ventilation be a big concern?

Would it be a bad idea to run a different zone out to the patio for those cool spring and fall evenings? What about during winter if we're not using it?

I know it will take a long time to change the temp of the house, any other disadvantages? Any other advice in general?

The ever-so-slightly-split-level living room

le morte de bea arthur — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:36:35 -0800

My living room is on two ever-so-slightly different levels; is this going to cause problems when it comes to laying a carpet? My living room (35 sq. m / 370 sq. ft) was once two separate rooms. The previous owner had the adjoining wall knocked through to form a single room, but seemingly couldn't afford to replace the carpets. They simply joined the two old rectangles of carpet using a strip of vaguely-similar carpet where the wall had been. All of these carpets are in shockingly bad repair, so we're going to bite the bullet and replace them with one single carpet (or that's the plan, anyway).

The only issue is that, where the wall once was, there's a half-inch (12mm as I measured it) drop in height between the levels of the floors (which are concrete, sealed with some sort of bitumen product). It looks like they did their best to bring the levels together with a little sloping section of cement a few inches wide that runs the width of the room.

Is this differerence in height going to be noticeable when I've got a seamless carpet running over it? Or would I be better off with something like a wooden/laminate floor on the lower section, joined to carpet on the slightly higher section?

Best way to sit on the floor?

tel3path — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 06:50:14 -0800

I sit on the floor a lot. It's uncomfortable and difficult to sustain. Please share with me your techniques and poses to help me achieve this. Bonus points for Alexander-related techniques.

Floor by the door chore

Toekneesan — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:29:51 -0800

Do I absolutely need cement board under my tiles? What happens if I don't use it? I'm about to install this type of tile in our bathroom, and the Lowes video I watched that covered tile installation recommended using cement board (aka DUROCK) on top of the subfloor. This is a 50 year old bathroom and the floor is pretty small, about four foot by five foot. But it is also a bit uneven so I was going to use some leveler first. My concern is once I've used the leveler, and then added the cement board, and then put the tile on top of that, the floor is going to be about 3/4 to an inch higher than it was. Also an inch higher than the floor in the connecting hall way, making the need for some sort of transition. I'll also need to remove and cut off a piece of the door, so it can open.

The transition and door issues can probably be avoided if I skip the cement board, but if I do, how likely is the grout to crack? The cement board actually seems more flexible to me than the plywood it will cover. If I'm already putting down cement in the form of leveler, is the board still necessary to prevent future cracking?

Insulating a small brick area.

zvs — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:04:33 -0800

How can I insulate under my front door? I tore up the floor in the entryway to my house, and I'm building a new one. In the process, I exposed the brick directly under the door, which will soon be covered up again. (The area is about 5' by 8").

I'm guessing since the floor is usually not missing, I should insulate this spot while I have the chance. What's an appropriate material to put in this area? Bonus: I'm pretty sure moisture sometimes makes its way in here.

Like my great-uncle's back hair.

TallulahBankhead — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:15:45 -0800

Will my rug shed forever? I bought a runner from World Market a couple of months ago, and while I love it, it's still shedding like crazy. The rug is 100% wool, cut pile, made in India. Any idea if it will continue to shed forever, or if it will taper off? And if it will stop, is there anything I can do to speed up the process?

The Crumbs Remain

nadawi — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:51:10 -0800

I have a small, tile, kitchen floor (small space, largish tiles). What is the best swiffer-type product to use after sweeping to get the last bit of dirt and crumbs that are left? Or is a traditional mop still the best bet?