Hello world. We need to have a chat about gaps in your floor.

The picture I have here shows a gappy floor that we were tasked with resanding. A request we got from our customers, and one that we get frequently, was to fill the gaps in the floor with a wood filler. So lets talk about why this floor looks the way it does currently, why filling the floor with wood filler is unequivocally the wrong solution, and what our best options are when moving forward with your gappy floor.

So what caused the floor to look like this in the first place. Let’s start with the gaps. This floor has large gaps in it. The gaps shown here are not normal seasonal gapping that you would find at the end of the dry season. These are gaps that will permanently be open to some degree or another. This is due to essentially 2 things. 1. The floor was acclimated incorrectly or not acclimated at all. (For the sake of not getting too deep into acclimation procedures here, we are going to do a future post revolving around proper acclimation process). Or 2. The floor has not been maintained with the proper amount of supplemental humidification in the home. Wood flooring is a hygroscopic material. If you don’t handle the relative humidity correctly during acclimation or after the installation, you will end up with gaps in your floor that NEVER go away, regardless of season of the year. Now, concerning the gap itself, why does this joint look so jagged and ugly. Unfortunately, the last floor mechanic to sand this floor decided to try to “trowel fill” the floor the eliminate gaps. The floor has since contracted even more leaving a fractured filler in all the joints.

Why is filling gaps with wood filler the wrong solution? It is frequently requested of us, when someone has an old gapped out floor, to trowel fill the floor. In our region of the country this should not be done. In the Great Lakes region of the country, we experience drastic swings in humidity between the dry season and the humid season. We don’t have the consistent dryness that is seen in the high desert of Colorado or the consistent wetness of the Pacific Northwest. Therefore, there will always be too much movement for a filler to sit in a joint without fracturing. The other reason to avoid filling gappy floors is the natural deflection (vertical movement upon walking across the floor) that we find with plywood subfloors. This deflection will also cause filler to crack. If you don’t want to spend time vacuuming filler out of your wood floor, avoid filling, especially trowel filling, your old gappy flooring.

So what do we do with a floor that was acclimated or maintained incorrectly resulting in permanent gapping? There are two unfortunate directions we can go with this. 1. We can rip out the existing floor and do things right from the start. Or 2. You as the customer can live with the gaps and accept it as is. With the second solution, keep in mind that there are old gapped out floors all over the country. When looked at with the correct lens, this adds to the charm of an old floor. It has a weathered, used look to it.

When meeting with customers for estimates, I always like to say that resanding an old floor will make it look amazing, but it won’t make it look new. A gapped out old floor will remained gapped out after resanding and should never be trowel filled in our region of the country. Please keep this in mind during your resand and if you are fortunate enough to be reading this on the front end of your project, prior to installation, think carefully about who you choose as your flooring contractor. An incorrectly acclimated floor can look near perfect following installation. Once the dry season rolls around, however, the story will be vastly different. The lowest bidder will almost certainly not have education to act in the best interest of your floor for the future.