Repairing Your Wood Floors

Wood floors are beautiful, warm and have become a very popular feature in homes. Ripping out old carpeting and refinishing the wood floors beneath gives a real boost to your home's property value. However, if you're at the stage where you ripped up the old carpet and have found unsightly damaged wood flooring beneath you may be wondering what to do. Here are some tips for handling those damaged areas.

If the problems you found are only surface blemishes you can clear these up by sanding and refinishing the floors. But sometimes the problems go deeper. For instance, if the damage is deeper than the surface but there's no structural problems in the floor then you can cut out the damaged section and replace it. The trickiest part will be finding the replacement pieces. If your floor in tongue in groove, you'll want to take a sample of your existing floor to a flooring store and match it with their stock. If that doesn't pan out, try cutting out a piece from the closet and replace the closet section with a less matched piece. If there is no closet to borrow from you may be forced to refinish the entire floor for an even finish across the room.

You have a choice on how to replace those damaged pieces if the boards are in a random length pattern. You can cut out a square or rectangle encompassing the damaged area and replacing it with matching length pieces. Do this only if you are easily able to cover that spot with a rug or carpet piece as it will look obvious that this square area is cut differently than the rest of the floor. If the damaged areas are in an open part of the room you'll want to make the replacement less obvious by removing the full board that is damaged and do this in the same staggered pattern. You'll be replacing them with matching length wood boards, but they will maintain the same staggered length of the original floor design so it won't be an obvious replacement once you've stained and finished the floor to match.