Wood expands and contracts with seasonal differences in humidity and the older a floor gets the greater the chance that these movements will.
How to fix gaps in old hardwood floors.
How to fix old hardwood floors with gaps and cupping.
How to fill gaps in prefinished hardwood floors.
This leaves your floor looking even worse and requiring you to dig out the old putty and replace it.
Try to avoid gaps in the first place.
The problem is magnified when the boards were not tightly laid in the first place.
Before installing hardwood floors it is important to acclimate the product to your home.
There are many different ways to go about correcting this type of issue but we will dive into the most common.
If gaps remain or the floor is old it is possible to.
You can fill the gaps in an unfinished floor with a mixture of.
For this reason very few floor experts will still suggest using a putty filler.
The latter is an older method of filling gaps and not only serves as a way to fix floor gaps but also will help keep any drafts that come up through the floor to a minimum as well.
Putty fillers were once a mainstay of hardwood floor repair.
With older tongue and groove hardwood or even wide plank floors gaps inevitably develop between the boards mostly because the wood shrinks over time as it dries out and loses moisture content.
Have the installer perform a humidity level test because either very high or very low humidity can cause bowing splitting and warping.
Water logged wood will first swell then shrink as it dries out.
Over time however the putty hardens chips and flakes.
Filling large gaps in old wood floors.
If you cannot fix the problem by installing a humidifier you may need to take more drastic action when it comes to filling wide gaps.
If your wood floor shows gaps in the winter wait until the spring when the indoor environment regains moisture to see if the gaps close up.
Another exacerbating condition is water damage.