Filling Gaps In Old Wood Floors With Rope

A smooth cotton rope stuffed into the gap loaded with carpenters glue will stick very well.

Filling gaps in old wood floors with rope.

How to fill floorboard gaps with rope. An old but popular method for filling large gaps requires rope. Now that your rope is stained and dry use a utility knife to cut it into segments equal to the length of the gaps you want to fill. While the rope doesn t look like wood you can stain it to blend with the floorboards and the filled gaps will be much less noticeable than the dark empty gaps.

This method harkens back to the days of arabian shipbuilding techniques and has an added bonus of providing some minor insulation. Be sure to use. Now you are ready to actually correct the gaps in your hardwood floor. If your gap is truly wide enough to even consider filling it with rope and the gaps don t close up in summer use cork instead.

You can use rope as a way to fill up a big crack and then just top up with filler so you don t have to use as much filler but the filler itself will still crack and fall out over time. 3 if desired tint rope with wood stain to match floor. Filling large gaps with natural fiber rope is a traditional method commonly used on wide plank floorboards in very old homes. Avoid synthetic rope and wedge it into place.

3 if desired tint rope with wood stain to match floor. 4 force rope into gap between planks with putty knife or painter s tool. It should help the filler to go in between the boards a bit more evenly. Set the angled tip of the tube into the gap and pull the trigger.

1 scrape debris from between flooring planks with putty knife or painter s tool. As with using pieces of wood you will want to measure the rope to fit. Filling floor cracks with lengths of rope might seem strange but ropes made from natural cotton or jute are stainable flexible and they adjust to changing humidity along with the floor. Then place a section of rope on top of the gap and use your fingers a 5 in 1 painter s tool a plastic spackling knife or a similar tool to gently press the rope into the gap.

The old school way i have seen to fill large gaps in wide plank flooring is with rope. Repeat for each gap. 2 vacuum floor clean of all dust and debris. There will just be less of it.

As to filling the gaps don t use some sort of wood filler. Instead use sections of rope. 1 scrape debris from between flooring planks with putty knife or painter s tool. In this video this old house contractor tom silva explains how to fill gaps in a wide plank wood floor.