# Cracks between floorboards



## Tellebot (Mar 5, 2015)

I don't know if the wood floors in our 1895 house are original, but they are old. The outline of the old trapdoor into the cellar is still in our dining room, and the home inspector when we bought the house said the third and final time the basement was dug/expanded was before 1960, based on the materials, so the floors are at least that old. There are a lot of gaps between the boards. It looks like some of the cracks have been filled with something which has since dried and broken, and only small bits are left. 

Why are there so many gaps? Has the wood shrunk as it has aged and dried?

is there something I can use to fill the cracks? Would wood filler work okay? I'd like to refinish the floors, but that's not going to happen any time soon, not until we don't have toddlers in the house at least. I don't want to do it more than once!

Here's a pic of one of the widest cracks with a quarter for size reference.


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## Tellebot (Mar 5, 2015)

This is what most of the floor looks like.


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## bud16415 (Mar 5, 2015)

My 1880&#8217;s floors look about like yours. In the winter they dry out and shrink and open up about like yours in summer they will mostly close up. Those look like maple and they sell a tub of filler you can buy that&#8217;s mostly sawdust and glue and you can add stain or buy it in different shades. It does a good job of hiding them. That bad crack you have looks to be something wrong going on that&#8217;s more than drying out would cause. Maybe a repair that was good enough as they were using carpet at the time. Looks like different widths also. You could take it up and rip a new piece to get a better fit or you could rip a filler strip and glue it in to fill that one. 

They look in great shape, a light sanding and some poly wouldn&#8217;t be that big of a job. If you are going to do the poly I have a thread I started with a few things not to do.


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## Tellebot (Mar 7, 2015)

The floors are in good shape for their age. They feel sound with minimal sloping from settling, and are quiter when we walk than any of our neighbors'. I would like to sand and stain them darker to match the rest of the woodwork. I think the floors have lightened over time, as the rooms are several shades lighter than the closets. And they might need more than a light sand, as the previous homeowners had a few dogs that scratched them up pretty good where they would jump on and off the couch. Our fix for that was a rug for now. I just don't really want to take that job on right now with other things needing to be done more. I just wanted to see if I could fill the gaps now and finish it later. I'm tired of being worried about crumbs and dog hair and spills in the cracks. Would it be bad to fill now and sand/stain later? Would it be best to fill them now while the wood is dry and shrunk, or wait until summer when they expand? I live in Minnesota, where seasonal changes really affect wood.

What would a more sinister reason for the gaps be than typical drying? Should I look for anything in particular? I measured the boards and they are a uniform 2.25" width. There are some other gaps almost as wide as the one in the picture in various parts of the living and dining rooms, but most are as wide as my fingernails are thick, and some boards have no gaps between them.

The only area where I can see any evidence of repair is where I think a wall was taken down and replaced with a wide arch between the rooms. These little boards are pretty noticeable!


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## bud16415 (Mar 7, 2015)

When I was a kid hardwood floors were filled with a mixture of paste wax and sawdust, and rubbed in with burlap wadded up. Waxing with paste wax was common also. Put the wax on and buff off. Something like that might work for now until you have time a few years down the road to rent a sander. I wouldn&#8217;t try staining them unless I had all the finish off unless I was trying to use a stain the same shade they are now and even then its not the proper way to go about it. The real wide cracks I think wont look right being filled and the filler wont hold up IMHO. I would fill them with a hard wood strip cut to fit and glued in.


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## slownsteady (Mar 7, 2015)

Wait this winter out, it is almost over. Then you can see if the floor adjusts itself for the summer months. That would be the time to make a plan. If you fill now, it might crumble when the boards expand, or the boards may try to buckle.


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## sparrow4 (Jun 17, 2015)

Take a jute rope, rolled it tight, put it between the joints, stained it to match the floor, and now, when the wood expands and contracts, the rope shrinks and gives, comes back and forth so there are no gaps. And visually, the rope doesn't jump out at you, because it's stained to match the floor.


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## slownsteady (Jun 17, 2015)

sparrow4 said:


> Take a jute rope, rolled it tight, put it between the joints, stained it to match the floor, and now, when the wood expands and contracts, the rope shrinks and gives, comes back and forth so there are no gaps. And visually, the rope doesn't jump out at you, because it's stained to match the floor.



Nice idea. I've never seen it before, but maybe that's because it hides well


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## bud16415 (Jun 17, 2015)

sparrow4 said:


> Take a jute rope, rolled it tight, put it between the joints, stained it to match the floor, and now, when the wood expands and contracts, the rope shrinks and gives, comes back and forth so there are no gaps. And visually, the rope doesn't jump out at you, because it's stained to match the floor.


 

I always wondered what you could use jute rope for now I know.


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## slownsteady (Jun 17, 2015)

How does that handle dirt / dust / pet hair?


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## bud16415 (Jun 17, 2015)

My strangest floor crack story happened over the weekend on the 100 year old chestnut floors we finished last year. 
Saturday she was walking across the living room floor in her bare feet when she yelled and got down on all fours and said #$&%@*. What the hell happened I asked and she said I almost stepped on a razor sharp wire sticking out of the floor. I got down to look and there was a two inch long rusty steel wire standing straight up. I tried to pull it out by hand and had to get plyers and guess what it was? 




It was a bobby pin bent out like a L. someone maybe 60 years ago dropped that thing or pushed it down in the crack after opening it up to the L shape I think and all these years that spring tension was waiting to pop up. I sanded those floors and gave them all that poly you would think it would have stayed put after all that. She&#8217;s just lucky she didn&#8217;t step down on it as it would have poked thru her foot and being old and rusty you know what that would have done.


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