How To Fix Gap In Hardwood Floor

Learn how to ready floating floor gaps with a uncomplicated and cheap DIY flooring gap fixer! Why pay $60 when you can make 1 for just a few bucks!

Floating Floor Gaps

If you lot have laminate or engineered flooring, there's a good chance you've seen gaps develop between some of your planks. Lord knows we take! They started actualization after our beginning year in this house, and they've been growing steadily e'er since.

large end gap in an engineered wood floor

All laminate flooring and some engineered wood floor (similar ours) are floating floors. This means that the floorboards are not nailed, glued or stapled to the subfloor. Rather, the whole flooring acts as an enormous jigsaw puzzle that lies on pinnacle of the subfloor below but is non in any way attached to it. Floating floor installation is as well ideal when installing new laminate, engineered or luxury vinyl floor (LVF) over an existing floor, similar ours that sits atop an older tile floor.

Floating floors are designed to let for the seasonal expansion and wrinkle of the flooring planks. Just what happens when there'due south just likewise much contraction?

In our case, all of the floor gaps coincide with the main HVAC duct that runs just below the subfloor. This run of floor must get even hotter and drier in the wintertime than anywhere else in the firm.

As these gaps grew over the years, we started to retrieve that we may demand to supercede the whole flooring.

Every bit you lot can guess, that thought didn't sit well with either of us, and then I took to the internet for a solution.

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How to Fix Floating Flooring Gaps

I learned almost immediately that we weren't alone.

That made me feel better!

And so I found a product fabricated specifically for our problem. It'southward chosen the Floor Gap Fixer – an aluminum cake with a sticky substance on one side. It also comes with a inexpensive rubber mallet. All this for $lx on Amazon or $50 from their website.

The thought is that y'all stick the floor gap logroller on the board that has a gap at the end and wack it with the mallet. This closes one gap and opens up some other behind it. You then shut that gap, and the next, and the side by side until you've hidden the gap behind the nearest baseboard.

How to Brand a DIY Floor Gap Fixer

It's and then simple, but the production really seemed like a ripoff considering what you got. I already ain several rubber mallets, then I didn't need their inexpensive 1.

As for the metal block, I could indistinguishable that with a piece of four x 4 lumber and make my own DIY floor gap fixer. I take tons of information technology in the basement.

And the sticky stuff? I figured some extreme forcefulness double-sided tape would practice the play tricks.

4x4, rubber mallet, double-sided tape and scissors on a table

I sanded ane side of my DIY floor gap logroller with 150 grit sandpaper so the tape would become a good grip on it.

To clean or non to make clean before using the DIY floor gap fixer?

I had seen some talk online of cleaning the floors first with a window cleaner or ammonia, and then I'll tell you my feel with both cleaning and non cleaning start.

When I cleaned the floors get-go, the double-sided record bonded more strongly to the flooring than it did to the DIY floor gap logroller. This made it difficult to remove the block from the floor, it and required me to scrape the tape from the floor with my fingers.

It also meant that I had to use new tape for each gap. Not but was that time-consuming, but for a lot of gaps on a big floor, the cost would outset to creep upwardly. Fifty-fifty and so, information technology would notwithstanding be cheaper than buying one, but why waste money?

When I didn't make clean the floors, my DIY floor gap filler had more than than plenty grip to become the job done, and removing the cake was a breeze. I was able to close several gaps earlier the stickiness finally gave out and required me to change the tape.

As you tin can see, we had some big, honkin' gaps! That's a 3/8 inch gap. Handan virtually fell in the other day! 🙂

tape measure in a gap between floor boards

After a couple of wacks on my DIY floor gap fixer, here'south how it looked:

How to Set up Floating Floor Gaps YouTube Video Tutorial

This procedure makes more sense when seen in action, and so we fabricated a little video for you guys. Enjoy and say adieu to those floating floor gaps!