Filling Gaps In Old Wood Floors With Rope

Filling floor cracks with lengths of rope might seem strange but ropes made from natural cotton or jute are stainable flexible and they adjust to changing humidity along with the floor.

Filling gaps in old wood floors with rope.

A smooth cotton rope stuffed into the gap loaded with carpenters glue will stick very well. If your gap is truly wide enough to even consider filling it with rope and the gaps don t close up in summer use cork instead. Avoid synthetic rope and wedge it into place. In this video this old house contractor tom silva explains how to fill gaps in a wide plank wood floor.

The old school way i have seen to fill large gaps in wide plank flooring is with rope. Set the angled tip of the tube into the gap and pull the trigger. It should help the filler to go in between the boards a bit more evenly. As with using pieces of wood you will want to measure the rope to fit.

4 force rope into gap between planks with putty knife or painter s tool. How to fill floorboard gaps with rope. 1 scrape debris from between flooring planks with putty knife or painter s tool. This method harkens back to the days of arabian shipbuilding techniques and has an added bonus of providing some minor insulation.

While the rope doesn t look like wood you can stain it to blend with the floorboards and the filled gaps will be much less noticeable than the dark empty gaps. Then place a section of rope on top of the gap and use your fingers a 5 in 1 painter s tool a plastic spackling knife or a similar tool to gently press the rope into the gap. Be sure to use. Filling large gaps with natural fiber rope is a traditional method commonly used on wide plank floorboards in very old homes.

Repeat for each gap. Instead use sections of rope. As to filling the gaps don t use some sort of wood filler. Now you are ready to actually correct the gaps in your hardwood floor.

2 vacuum floor clean of all dust and debris. Now that your rope is stained and dry use a utility knife to cut it into segments equal to the length of the gaps you want to fill. There will just be less of it. 3 if desired tint rope with wood stain to match floor.

You can use rope as a way to fill up a big crack and then just top up with filler so you don t have to use as much filler but the filler itself will still crack and fall out over time. 1 scrape debris from between flooring planks with putty knife or painter s tool. Not only will it be expensive but you will find it will crack out in just about a year due to the seasonal movements of the old floor boards. Before you begin filling gaps in old wood floors with caulk make sure you have properly inserted the tube into a standard caulk gun.