What if wooden floors creak

The bothering creak of wooden floors does not at all pacify and very rarely evokes childhood memories of a grandmother’s summer vacation. Therefore, to save your own nerves, find out what to do if wooden floors squeak.

Of course, the ideal solution to this problem is to use the occasion and start a long-planned repair with the complete replacement of the sexes.

If a similar way out of the situation does not suit you, then you will have to deal with reconstructive floor repair. This is a troublesome thing, and besides, you may not be able to completely get rid of the squeak. However, it’s still worth a try, as no specialist will give you guarantees on the result or lack thereof.

Causes of squeak

The creaking of wooden floors occurs in two situations that depend on the material from which your floor is created:

• if the floorboards (or any other flooring, for example, chipboard) are not very tight to the logs (or wooden beams);
• if the parquet is loose on the surface of the base on which it is laid.

In both cases, the only way to get rid of the squeak is to remove the appeared space between the floor covering and its base. However, to act in these cases will have to be different.

I have sex

The only way to solve the question of what to do if wooden floors creak when they are laid on logs (wooden beams) - this is to screw the floor covering to them more carefully.

For this you will need:

• long screws for wood,
• screwdriver or drill with a screwdriver attachment.

The process of eliminating the squeak will look like this:

1. Find the most creaking places of the floor (to “not lose” them later, mark them with chalk).
2. Then determine where the lags (beams) are in the floor. If the floor has been painted repeatedly, the paint will have to be brushed off to find the nails with which it is attached to its base. In the case when the flooring is made of planks, to find the lag under them, you can remove the extreme planks (logs always go perpendicular to the wall at a constant distance from each other). At the same time, you can look under the floor structure and see what state the lags are in. If from under the boards on you "smelled" of staleness, dampness and mold, then instead of a cosmetic restoration of the floors, you should still perform its full replacement.
3. Now it is necessary to screw the screws in the logs (beams) so that the boards (or chipboard) are pressed against them as closely as possible. The pitch of the screws in this case may vary depending on the intensity of the squeak, but it should not be more than 15 centimeters. Try not to get a nail into the nails, as in this case it will break and you may get injured.

Parquet

No less inconvenience can deliver creaking parquet. And since in this case the creak arises due to the deformation of its individual elements (and not the entire floor covering), then, first of all, it will be necessary to find them, since it will be necessary to eliminate the defect pointwise.

To get rid of the squeak you need:

• drill with a drill diameter of 6-8 mm,
• ordinary cement (about 20 g per each creaking bar) - if not, then a mixture for plastering works,
• A very large syringe without needles.

Having prepared everything you need for repair, you can proceed to the main action:

1. Carefully drill a hole in the middle of the creaking plate of the parquet.
2. Prepare a cement mortar, the consistency of which should resemble ordinary milk.
3. Pour the cement mixture into the syringe. Make sure you can squeeze it out and it is not stuck in the syringe. If the mixture is too thick, dilute it with water. In too liquid mixture will have to add a little cement.
4. Insert the syringe into the hole and pour the solution into it in small portions. Remember that after each “dose” of the solution, another portion of air should come out from under the parquet. Take your time - neither cement nor plaster mix hardens instantly.
5. The hole must be filled with the mixture until it stops taking the solution.
6. Wait until the mortar solidifies and make sure that the parquet no longer creaks.
7. Fill the hole in the parquet plank with a special putty (or mastic) for wood.

Do not immediately try to get rid of all the deformed slats of the parquet from the squeak. First, make a “trial” repair better and just making sure that this solution helped you, continue to get rid of other creaking places. If the creak has not disappeared anywhere, you will most likely have to rebuild the entire parquet, updating the base surface of the floor along the way and replacing the damaged planks.

Video

Here you can see an example of how to eliminate the creaking of a wooden floor: