Hardwood Floor Repair in Murfreesboro, TN

When a hardwood floor in a Murfreesboro home gets damaged, we usually don't tear it all up. We swap out the boards that are hurt, fasten down the ones that move, and leave the sound wood where it is. Before any of that, we work out what made the floor fail, so the same boards don't break again next year.

First, the reason the floor failed

The U.S. Forest Service's Forest Products Laboratory explains that wood soaks up moisture from whatever is around it. It also says the water left in a board slowly evens out with the humidity of the air in the room.

So when boards swell, shrink or split, we hunt for the water behind it, such as a dripping dishwasher line, a damp crawl space or a slow leak at a door. We look under sinks, around doors and, when we can get in, in the crawl space before we price the fix.

The repairs we take on

• Split or stained boards. We cut out just those boards and slide new ones into the same rows, staggered so the repair doesn't look like a square patch.
• Creaks and loose spots. We find the board that shifts when you step on it and fasten it back to the layer below, from the top or from the crawl space.
• Open seams. When a gap between boards is steady and not growing, we fill it. When it is still moving, we deal with the moisture first.
• Deep gouges and pet marks. We sand down past the damage and finish the spot to match.
• Bare, worn traffic lanes. Where the finish has worn through to raw wood, we sand and refinish that area.

If the subfloor, the layer of plywood or boards the floor sits on, has gone soft, we fix it before new boards go down. Our subfloor repair page explains that job.

Getting the new wood to match

We bring a sample of your floor to the supplier, so the species, width and thickness all line up. Sometimes we can borrow boards from inside a closet for the main room, then put the new boards in the closet, where nobody looks.

Once the boards are in, we sand and coat either the repaired spot or the whole room, so the color and sheen blend. How much we sand depends on how close the match is, and we talk that over with you first. Our hardwood floor staining page covers how we match a stain color.

Letting the new boards settle in

The Wood Handbook says to install wood at the moisture level it will have once it is in use. It says this keeps seasonal changes down and helps avoid problems like a floor buckling.

So we don't nail in boards the day they arrive. The handbook says to test random pieces with a moisture meter when the flooring arrives and again before it goes down. We test the new boards and your old floor, and we leave the new wood in your house until the two readings are close.

Dust, paint and older houses

OSHA, the federal workplace safety agency, says wood dust becomes a possible health problem once sanding and cutting send wood particles into the air. We hang plastic over doorways and air vents in the room we're working in to keep the dust there.

The EPA says a home built before 1978 may have lead-based paint, and the older the house, the more likely that is. It says any repair in a pre-1978 home that has lead-based paint can easily create dangerous lead dust. So before we cut near painted trim along the walls, we ask what year your house was built.

Hauling off the old boards

We take the torn-out boards and scraps with us. Rutherford County says construction and demolition debris is not taken at its Convenience Centers and has to go to the Rutherford County Transfer Station instead. That's why we haul it, not you.

Your written quote

We look at the floor before we give you a price, and the quote comes in writing. We base our price on how many boards come out, how easy they are to match, how much sanding the blend needs, and whether the subfloor needs work.

Whoever does the job, ask them to write down:

• Which boards come out, and where the new wood comes from.
• Whether they refinish just the repair or the full room.
• The stain and finish names, so a later touch-up can match.
• What caused the damage, and whether fixing that cause is part of the price.
• How they will keep dust in the work area.
• Who moves the furniture.

Questions about hardwood floor repair in Murfreesboro

Get a quote for hardwood floor repair

Give us a call, or fill in the quote form with your ZIP code and a line about what's wrong with the floor. We'll come out, show you what we'd fix, and send you a written quote. You can see all our flooring work on the Murfreesboro Hardwood Flooring home page.