This is a very bossy article about using woodfiller on hardwood floors. You don't want me to put filler in those cracks. Serial Number Delphi Prism Xe more. I ’ve heard about filling my wood. Ordinarily, you can “fill” the gaps with wood filler, putty, or with pieces of rope – and then finish with stain to match the floor. The latter is an older method of filling gaps, and not only serves as a way to fix floor gaps, but also will help keep any drafts that come up through the floor to a minimum as well.

This is a very bossy article about using woodfiller on hardwood floors: Because filler is not a cure-all; it is a necessary evil I know you’ve seen those old-timey ads for tonics that claimed to cure dandruff, bad breath, warts, bunions, indigestion, shyness and malaise, all with one dose. Even though we’ve all been trained to doubt products that sound too good to be true, most people continue to believe that woodfiller will fix just about anything that ails a hardwood floor. But in the world of hardwood flooring, woodfiller is designed to camouflage small holes and chips in the floor, and that’s it.

It can't make large scratches disappear. It doesn't hide large holes. No matter what the packaging promises, filler does not take the place of wood.

So here, in no particular order, are all our favorite thoughts on the many weaknesses (and occasional strengths) of woodfiller on hardwood floors. Woodfiller does not permanently fill gaps Notice the important word here: permanently. Woodfiller can temporarily fill anything, even the annoying gaps that run parallel to the long edges of your floor boards. Error 1723 Installer Package there. But the size of those gaps changes all year long and the woodfiller in those gaps isn’t elastic enough to swell and shrink with the seasons and so will just get pummeled and eventually break up and look like kitty litter. Kitty litter trapped forever in your flooring gaps. Open, honest gaps are far more attractive than dirty, poorly filled gaps.

My Floor Guy says I should always trowel-fill floors before sanding. What does that mean?

Trowel-filling is exactly what it sounds like: spreading large quantities of filler over the entire area of a floor, allowing it to dry hard, then sanding off everything that doesn’t fill a void. Video Er Pro Ipa V1.9. In some cases (and in the hands of a professional) this procedure can have some benefits: on very new floors in climates where the boards don’t swell and shrink very much through the seasons, trowel-filling does help keep the finish contiguous and may help to prevent some cases of White Line Syndrome.

But in older, already gappy floors in climates with season extremes (yes, like Minnesota) the benefits of trowel-filling are short-lived. Within a year, the movement of the floor will break up the filler, leaving you with a finish which is no longer contiguous AND loose fill between the boards. Woodfiller is not a substitute for board replacement Wood has grain; woodfiller does not, so large areas of woodfiller look nothing like the wood that surrounds it. Even when it does take on the color of the stain or finish you use, it will still look like a big, undifferentiated blob on your floor.