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gaps in heart pine floor

16 years ago

I have small gaps between the planks of heart pine in my 1918 Foursquare house. The floor just got sanded, stained, and first finish of varnis today. However, I wanted to know if there was a finsh that we could pour over the floor to fill in the gaps. It's a bugger to clean those gaps out, especially with 2 small kids around. Thanks.

Darlynn

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Comments (3)

floorguy
16 years ago
You have a wood floor! Wood being hydroscopic, will swell with a gain in moisture(humidity) and shrink with a loss of moisture. Seasonal swelling and shrinking are normal for wood flooring.

If you fill the gaps, and the floor swells, it may buckle or compression cup the floor.

Again, seasonal gapping is normal and expected, unless the interior humidity, stays consistent within 5%
User
16 years ago
Plenty of people grew up with wood floors and the seasonal shrinking and swelling associated with them and it didn't kill them or make them sick and this was before the development of modern vacuum cleaners. Dirt and dust can be vacuumed out of any gapping just fine. Installing a HVAC system that also has a humdifier for the winter months will greatly help with minimizing the expansion/contraction cycle, as will a properly sized and functioning AC system for the summer months.

Go buy laminate if you want a plastic floor with no gaps.
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darlinw1
Original Author
16 years ago
OWWWW... geesh.
Perhaps I should clarify the situation. I know that wood floors have gaps and I do remember the expansion thing from elementary science. These are not the normal size gaps we are talking about. My house is old and we have heart pine floors in EVERY room, so I know the "normal rang of sizes the gaps are supposed to be.
These gaps look like the boards moved or something over the last 75 years. It's not a pain to vacuum them with my Swiffer vacuum, it's the wet stuff that's gross (for a prime example...baby barf, using a butter knife and a burp cloth to get it out is just not my cup of tea).
Anyway, back to the point. These gaps are too big to just be the "seasonal type gaps", 2 of them are almost 1/2 inch wide.
So, I really would not committ a sin by covering the origianl heart pine floor with linolium, so if anyone has any other suggestion, I would like to hear them. Thanks in advance.

Darlynn

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