How To Repair Floorboard Gouges

Even the very best of wood floors are bailiwick to damage. Hardwood floor, by its name, sounds like it should be really hard.

Just, compared to other materials like tile, rock, and laminate, it is relatively soft and decumbent to damage such equally scratches, gouges, and discoloration. Unfortunately, surface scratches and gouges are the inevitable outcome of daily clothing and tear.

To fix gouges in hardwood floors, you can place a damp towel over the dent and send a outburst of steam into the wood using an iron. Alternatively, using a filler to fill up the gouge is yet some other effective method.

Over time, a hardwood floor is likely to become scratched, nicked, or even gouged. Hither are detailed techniques on how to prepare gouges in hardwood floors as well as some tips to avoid them from happening.

How to Set Gouges in Hardwood Floors

Table of Contents

1 How to Set up Gouges in Hardwood Floors
- 1.i Using a Towel and Pressing Atomic number 26
- 1.2 Using a Wood Filler
- i.3 How to Have Care of your Hardwood Flooring
two Conclusion

Using a Towel and Pressing Iron

Dampen a corner of a make clean towel (not the whole thing considering y'all don't want to drip all over the forest).

Identify the damp towel over the dent and use the tip of the iron over the cloth to send a little outburst of steam into the wood. You might demand to do this a few times. The dent might non come off completely, simply information technology generally will become far less noticeable.

Using a Wood Filler

When a wood floor gets gouged difficult enough to interruption the wood fibers, the pressing iron arroyo won't work. You need to fill the wound with some wood filler.

You'll find different types of fillers staring at you at a paint store or in the paint section of a hardware shop or home eye. Some fillers, such every bit DAPs plastic fillers, are usually used to make full holes on projects earlier a final finish goes on.

Patches harden once they are dried, which means you tin can sand them level with the surrounding wood, apply stain (if needed) and so glaze the whole surface with a finish for an unblemished look.

The principal advantage of using solvent fillers is that they dry out faster, pregnant the sanding step can begin sooner.

Merely if you are trying to repair a wood floor that has already been stained and finished, be aware that the color won't necessarily come up out the same, whether you buy filler that has already mixed in color or buy neutral-color filler and tint it yourself with your leftover stain.

Plus, you exercise not really want to sand the filler level with the floor; that would just create a bigger surface area that y'all need to repair.

A different blazon of filler is designed for use on projects that already have finish. Sold in jars or tins as putty or in crayon-like sticks or fat-pb pencils, these fillers never really dry.

They have a very waxy consistency, and so you can hands push the material into a pigsty and rub off the excess with a soft cloth. Examples include DAP plastic putty and DAP blending stick.

These products usually won't absorb stain, but you lot can alloy the pre-mixed colors to create a custom shade. There'southward a little fleck of a smoothen on the filler, and so you lot don't need to add together terminate (and it probably wouldn't stick, anyhow).

The putty or repair sticks are also a great technique to use on a floor, more often than not because it's easier to repair the one spot you're targeting without damaging the surrounding woods and its stop.

Just the bigger the patch, the more noticeable it volition be if you merely fill up the hole with colored patch material, fifty-fifty if yous really work at blending colors to get the closest colour lucifer as possible.

That's because a single colour tin can't match the color variations in natural wood, thanks to the annual growth rings and other features that grew into the wood when the tree was alive.

An Oak, which is probably the type of wood in your parquet floor, has alternating bands of light- and dark-colored wood, plus very thin, dark brown streaks running vertically in each board. These streaks are called rays.

Re-creating these colour shade variations in a patch goes a long way toward making information technology invisible. Marking pens work great for this.

Try getting a repair kit that includes a few blending sticks plus a few markers, which are also useful for touching up scratches. To add beautiful details, such as the rays in oak, become a dark-brown permanent marker with an ultrafine tip.

How to Have Care of your Hardwood Floor

Whether from children or pets, boots, or rolling furniture, unprotected wood floors are about certain to go scratched.

If you're committed to keeping your hardwoods in tip-top shape and yous don't want to look for how to ready gouges in hardwood floors in the futurity, consider the following tried-and-true technique of safeguarding woods against the almost common threats to its flawlessness:

1. Identify fiber doormats near all exterior doors, as tracked-in dirt and dust are the enemies of beautiful, pristine hardwood floors.

2. Encourage friends and family unit to remove their slippers and shoes upon entering the firm—especially women in high heels!

3. Sweep or vacuum regularly in order to contain any clay or dust that manages to sneak in despite your best attempts at disallowment its entry.

four. If you are going to motility piece of furniture across a wood floor, always place felt protective pads under its legs (or apply a piece of leftover rug, soft side down).

5. prevent big-sized pets from entering all rooms with hardwood flooring, and always go on their nails neatly trimmed.

Conclusion

If a scratch has penetrated the floor deep enough to betrayal bare forest, at that place's a low-endeavor way to conceal the imperfection: Merely make full it in with a stain that matches the floor colour.

Blending pencils and stain markers are commonly available in a range of tones; check your local hardware stores or abode improvement retail concatenation store.

But traditional forest stain works equally well. Employ information technology using a pocket-sized brush or even a cotton swab—only be sure to wipe away whatsoever excess before it has the chance to dry.

To set a deep, wide gouge, opt for a pre-colored latex wood filler, i that closely matches the color of your hardwood.

Apply the filler using a plastic putty knife, which is the tool least probable to cause any further impairment to the floor.

Once the filler has air-dried properly, then employ fine-grit sandpaper to level the surface then that no deviation in elevation exists betwixt the patch and its surrounding expanse, lastly, coat varnish (thinned with x or 20 percent turpentine) over the repair.

And that concludes our certain but very well tested technique on how to fix gouges in hardwood floors.