Hardwood Floor Refinishing - Why Are There Gaps And Can They Be Filled? - By: kathy jhones

Anything made of wood is subject to expansion and contraction resulting from changes in humidity throughout the year. Because of this it is common for cracks and small gaps to appear in hardwood floors, especially floors with wider planks.

Most of these will only appear seasonally during the changes in moisture levels.

During winter, the humidity inside your home drops quite significantly when the heat is turned on. Because of the change, everything wood inside your home, including your hardwood floors, will shrink. This is a standard thing that happens to all wood floors and its nothing to be worried about.

To reduce the chances of getting cracks in your floor, you can make an effort to keep the humidity level between 45% and 55% throughout the year by using a humidifier.

In older homes with fir floors, gaps are very common. Over the years, during many winters and summers, the house and floor settles, it contracts and expands many times over and this takes its toll, leaving space between the boards.

Other times the hardwood flooring was not installed tight in the first place.

You may come across fir floors that have very large gaps because they have been sanded down so much that the entire top part of the groove has been removed and the tongue is left exposed below.

In most cases with fir floors, we don not recommend filling in between these gaps for a number of reasons:

For one, as we have already mentioned but especially in these older homes, there is too much movement seasonally. As well, due to the age of these homes the sub floor is usually not as stable as it used to be and walking over it causes movement between the individual boards. Both types of movement in the fir floor will soon "eject" the filler.

In addition to this, over the years these cracks have accumulated wax and dirt and this greatly prevents the adhesion of filler. Try running a knife through one of the gaps yourself to see what we are talking about.

Because of the movement and the years of dirt and wax buildup in the joints, the filler will refuse to hold properly. When it becomes loose and ejects it leaves sharp-edged, ugly gaps and gets ground into the newly finished floor surface. Thankfully, these old fir floors look really amazing sanded up and restored even with these gaps. In fact there are a number of people salvaging these old floors and reinstalling them in newer houses because they love their look.

On the other hand, if you have oak, maple, cherry and a number of other common hardwood floors in your home with smaller gaps and nail holes, then during the refinishing process, wood filler that is similar to your hardwood floors colour will be applied over the entire floor.

As the filler is applied, it gets pushed into all the gaps between the boards and any surface holes. But like with any older floor, there is no guarantee that the wood filler will completely adhere within the cracks or gaps. Build up of wax and dirt in the gap may make it difficult for the filler to adhere properly. And again, your hardwood floors move seasonally and as the the wood expands and contracts, filler in these gaps may be forced out with the movement of the boards.

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