Wood Putty?
One of the advantages to living in your evil, decrepit house as you work on it is that you are forced to spend a lot time thinking about future projects. Just sitting in my living room lawn chair confronts me with this to-do list:
1) I really need to scrape down and paint the ceiling.
2) There are several holes in the wall that need to be patched.
3) The whole room needs to be painted.
4) We need to re-hang the window trim.
5) The transom needs to be fixed.
6) The floor needs to be refinished.
Item six was on my mind yesterday. The living room floor boards are 5 inch wide planks of tongue in groove (heart of?) pine. The outer two feet or so next to the walls are painted/stained a dark brown color. And, there are a lot of wide cracks between the floor boards. Not wide enough for you to look into the crawlspace, but given a little encouragement, it could happen. What I find weird about these cracks is that someone filled them with what appears to be really ancient window glazing compound. I’ve even compared some glazing that flaked off the front door to it, and it looks identical to white junk between my floor boards. Anyone else ever seen something like this before?
Since I plan to fill these cracks with good (NOT ELMERS) wood putty, I’ll have to scrape all this crap out. On the upside, they only puttied the floor where they stained it. The middle of the room (presumably hidden under a rug) is just as naked as the day they installed it in 1890.
Another weird bit of trivia about the wood floors in our living room and dining room is that the floors have gotten smoother and taken on a hint of shine since we moved in to the Queen. Apparently, just walking on it has buffed it up a little. It’s pretty cool.
1) I really need to scrape down and paint the ceiling.
2) There are several holes in the wall that need to be patched.
3) The whole room needs to be painted.
4) We need to re-hang the window trim.
5) The transom needs to be fixed.
6) The floor needs to be refinished.
Item six was on my mind yesterday. The living room floor boards are 5 inch wide planks of tongue in groove (heart of?) pine. The outer two feet or so next to the walls are painted/stained a dark brown color. And, there are a lot of wide cracks between the floor boards. Not wide enough for you to look into the crawlspace, but given a little encouragement, it could happen. What I find weird about these cracks is that someone filled them with what appears to be really ancient window glazing compound. I’ve even compared some glazing that flaked off the front door to it, and it looks identical to white junk between my floor boards. Anyone else ever seen something like this before?
Since I plan to fill these cracks with good (NOT ELMERS) wood putty, I’ll have to scrape all this crap out. On the upside, they only puttied the floor where they stained it. The middle of the room (presumably hidden under a rug) is just as naked as the day they installed it in 1890.
Another weird bit of trivia about the wood floors in our living room and dining room is that the floors have gotten smoother and taken on a hint of shine since we moved in to the Queen. Apparently, just walking on it has buffed it up a little. It’s pretty cool.
posted by John | 7:21 PM
4 Comments:
There are several ways (besides putty) to fill in these gaps. One is hemp rope. I've used this and it's cheap and easy.
Check it out:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=wood+floors+gaps+hemp+rope&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-500&x=wrt
Karen
I was in a lovely old Victorian where they (the original owners) had leveled the floor with PLASTER all around the edges before putting down carpet. Bizarre.
The standard thing to do here in Germany is to cover the floors with "estrich" (screed?). Think high school floors, that cement sort of stuff with (or without) stone/glass bits in it. This on all floors of the house.
We've looked at a couple old places to sell where they were putting it down straight on the old wood floors.
One doesn't renovate let alone restore here, one modernizes.
Karen,
I tried the link but didn't get anywhere.
How does hemp do with sanding and sealing the floor? Do you cover it with something?
Annie,
Plaster is weird, but it makes a lot more sense than some of the other stuff I've seen people do.
Angus,
That is a shame they "modernize" everything in Deutscheland.
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