Than to seal cracks in a wooden floor? Floor repair

When buying housing, new settlers, as a rule, immediately begin repair - even if a new building is purchased. And even more so, if the apartment is bought in the secondary housing market or inherited from the parents. Repair of apartments with their own hands or with the involvement of specialists is practically the inevitable reality of any new settler in our country. The modern type of housing is attached to the installation of plasterboard partitions, spotlights, multi-level ceilings.

Possible problems

The floors in such apartments are a separate topic. In the old panel houses the variety of their device is no different. This, as a rule, linoleum or boards over the simplest concrete screed. Repair of the floor in Khrushchev is required most often immediately after the settlement.

If you get this kind of floor, you should try to level the surface and get rid of the eternal dust. Nowadays, usually an old screed is cleaned to the base and a new one is made, especially since there is no shortage of materials for this. Minor defects can be repaired - fill the unevenness with tile adhesive.

And if you have wooden floors? Covering the boards with time has the property of cracking, because of the friction against each other floorboards make a creak. Usually, the owners try to eliminate it by screwing the boards with screws or by pouring glue into the drilled holes. Such measures are far from always effective. Planning the repair of the floor in Khrushchev, prepare yourself for certain difficulties.

Sometimes the need for restoration of wooden floors is due to a flood that happened due to own fault or because of neighbors from the top. If the floors are spoiled seriously, it becomes clear that major repairs can not be avoided.

You can see the wooden floors of the "Khrushchev" on the photo before the repair.

Let's start to repair

So, let's fix it. Planning it, you need to decide what you need - to bring the wooden floor into a divine state or to use the coating as a base under the finishing layer. It depends on it, whether you will repair the existing floor or completely replace it. Perhaps it is enough just to eliminate the cracks in the wooden floor.

Work begins with inspection and if necessary dismantling. The flooring should be carefully examined and evaluated. Undamaged boards will be useful in the construction of a new coating.

Then you need to clear the place for work and buy the material in the right amount. The list of everything that will be used for floor repairs, price and quantity will be specified in advance. You will need bars measuring 50 by 50 cm, floorboard and polyethylene film as a vapor barrier. When repairing the floor, it is possible to insulate it, which is important for the apartments on the lower floors, especially in cold areas. As a heater, mineral wool boards are used. They should be tight, keep in shape. On packages of such mineral wool, the size is always indicated, so it is easy to calculate the required quantity.

Sequencing

At the beginning of the repair, polyethylene film is spread on the floor, the panels of which should overlap each other by approximately 20 cm. This is done to prevent moisture from accessing the lower rooms.

Mineral cotton wool is cut into strips about 3-4 centimeters thick, which are fastened around the perimeter of each room. Why set the bars at a distance slightly less than the width of the insulation plates. The smoothness of the installation is controlled by the level. Between them lay the insulation plates, which must fit tightly into the rectangles between the bars.

How to deal with boards depends on whether it is a roughing layer or the final one. If you need to align the old wooden floor, spreading a new coating on top, the boards can be decomposed at short intervals. Then the next stage will be laying over boards of sheets of fiberboard or plywood as the basis under a decorative covering. On the above photo - wood floors after repair.

If the floorboards creak

In order not to interfere with the problem of creaking floorboards for as long as possible, fasten them to self-tapping screws. If you do not plan anything on top of the floorboards, you should pay special attention to their quality. To strengthen them you need as much as possible densely with leveling in height. Materials must be dry.

After laying the boards are polished, sometimes repeatedly, achieving an ideal flatness of the surface. Before the polishing process, it is required to plaster the last remaining slits. Such polished and varnished wooden floors look very prestigious and modern.

If the reason was the usual drying, the boards should be tested for strength - there should be no sag and creaking. You may need to remove the floorboards and additionally fix them with screws. The next step is to fill in the cracks and small cracks. Inexpensive and reliable option - acrylic putty for wood. From the tools you only need a spatula. After complete drying, all the places of puttying are cleaned.

Than to seal cracks in a wooden floor?

You can prepare an old wooden floor board under a floor covering in many ways. For example, prepare a mixture for leveling out sawdust and PVA glue or buy ready-made fillers. You can use a standard screed made of sand and cement. The so-called self - leveling mixtures are applied to a clean prepared surface and leveled with guide beacons. But this method has a drawback - a long time of drying of most of the compounds.

Often, the defects associated with the drying of boards occur from the low importance of air. Another cause is an incorrectly laid covering, deformation of lags. Finding the cause of the defect, you can determine what to cover the cracks in the wooden floor.

When the lag is to blame

If you suspect that the reason for the appearance of a squeak is a lag defect, it can be checked only by dismantling the entire cover. The removed bars are checked for strength, the unsuitable ones must be replaced. Then the boards are covered again and fixed firmly to the bars. In this case, there may be significant differences in height (up to ten millimeters). Align the boards with a plane.

A mixture for sealing wide slits is prepared by mixing sawdust with PVA glue. The pre-prepared composition is applied to the required places, after drying, the grinding step begins. Cracks can also be filled with a mounting foam, the foamed residues of which, after drying, are cut with a regular clerical knife. After that, the whole surface is treated with acrylic putty.

Thus, we see that there are enough options for closing the cracks in the wooden floor. For example, the elimination of large cracks can be done with the help of a tourniquet, while glue composition is required. In the case of small cracks, it is worth buying an acrylic primer and a floor sealant, as well as a concrete contact. Initially, each slot is treated with soil, then concretecontact (the surface becomes rough at the same time), then a tourniquet or tow is impregnated impregnated with a sealant. After drying, the floor is caked.

Another way to repair

And then how to fill the cracks in the wooden floor? If you do not want to rebuild the floors, you can choose a simpler way. Try to zashtantovat boards among themselves. The classical method will require a drill, a long drill, a hammer, a tape measure and dowels - thin long wooden sticks of circular cross-section.

With the help of a drill holes are drilled in two adjacent floorboards at an angle of 45 degrees. Each of them must begin in one board and end in the other. It is clogged with a dowel, previously glazed with glue. Its protruding part is cut and cleaned flush. The adjacent hole is drilled with an indent about a quarter of a meter from the side of the other board, so that the dowels are perpendicular to each other, and so on until full reinforcement.

A more modern method involves the presence of self-tapping screws, as well as a special drill, which holes are drilled to seal their heads. At the last stage, all irregularities are eliminated.

What else can you do?

The filling of cracks in a wooden floor can be made by so-called soft and hard methods. For soft use twine (best natural), as well as polymer glue, a wooden wedge and a hammer. Twine pre-soaked in the glue, then using a hammer and a wedge inserted between the boards. After polymerization of the glue (about a day later), the remaining irregularities are ground with putty.

The advantage of this glue is its elasticity. Even when drying occurs, the crevices no longer expand. About a day later, you need to clean the surface, and you can start painting.

The most reliable way

A rigid method of embedding requires tools such as a plane, a hammer and a hand saw. From the thin wooden slats the necessary number of wedges is cut out, the width of which is adjusted to the size of the slit, then the wedges are gently slashed into the slots with the help of a hammer. The width of the gap is different everywhere, and it will be necessary to fit the plane. Hard method requires a lot of strength and patience, but it is the most reliable.

Before the prepared bar is inserted into the slot, the glue is poured into it. Endure the day, clears the cracks, and you can start painting.

Planning the repair of apartments with their own hands should know that there are more exotic ways, for example, filling the slots with hot bitumen. But it is quite expensive, dirty and time consuming. It is known that the cardinal way to disguise all the cracks and unevenness of the floor is to make it plywood. The effect of this method will be the longest.