DIY parquet repair and restoration

Recommendation points

• Damage assessment and preparation for repair
• Cosmetic and local repair of parquet
• Restoration of varnish coating or its replacement
• Overhaul of the parquet floor
• Parquet scraping
• Putty and sanding
• Varnishing and polishing

Over time, parquet can lose its luxurious appearance due to simple negligence, improper use or aging. Depending on the degree and scale of damage, repairs of varying complexity are carried out. We will tell you about the methods of restoration of the parquet floor in this article..

Parquet during major repairs is often torn down only because of its unassuming appearance, and it is quite possible to breathe life into an old floor covering. Of course, the parquet repair process is quite long and tedious, but what could be more beautiful and more comfortable than natural wood under your feet? In addition, it is much cheaper to restore an old noble flooring than installing the same laminate..

Damage assessment and preparation for repair

Before deciding on the possibility of repair and its composition, a detailed study of the coating should be carried out and the nature of the violations should be established. The room must also be prepared for renovation: complete absence of furniture, no exceptions, wet cleaning and maximum dust removal, curtained doorway.

Each piece of parquet should be tapped with a hammer handle around the edges and in the center, assessing the vibration and sound of the impact. A firmly fixed plank will hardly react to a light blow. But if the fastening with the substrate is weakened, it will inevitably “hum” and make a dull, empty sound. Delaminated boards should be marked with a pencil.

In addition to delamination of the dies from the substrate, they may be displaced with the formation of gaps. The width of the thickest one must be measured by pushing and cutting wood chips, the thickness of which is determined with a caliper. This data will be useful when choosing a putty composition..

Parquet or its area with gaps of more than 2.5 mm, swelling due to soaking and the presence of more than 30% of peeled dies cannot be restored and must be repainted.

Cosmetic and local repair of parquet

If the appearance of the parquet is spoiled only by small cracks and chips, do not rush to undertake major repairs. Scratches and small defects can be removed with a toner pencil. Small cracks should be slightly poked out with a sectional blade and vacuumed, then putty and varnished.

In the places where the coating adjoins the walls, wooden wedges-spacers should be driven in. If they are loose, they need to be driven deeper or replaced to prevent further damage to the parquet..

Restoration of varnish coating or its replacement

Quite often, the parquet has no structural defects, only the lacquer coating becomes unusable. This is determined by the absence of black veins between the dies and strong cracks. If the coating is simply rubbed off and has lost its gloss, it is enough to clean it with a 240 grit abrasive paper and apply two coats of finishing varnish.

If there are many deep cracks and grooves on the surface, and the wood texture is practically not visible, this is a clear sign of oxidation of the top layer of the wood. In such cases, the varnish is completely removed by grinding no more than 80 grit, then cycled and re-varnished. In some cases, it makes sense to re-putty the floor..

Overhaul of the parquet floor

There are two ways to restore the integrity of the coating, each is applied depending on the method of laying the parquet.

If the parquet is laid on bituminous mastic without a plywood backing, the edges of the peeled dies are drilled through at a distance of half the width of the plank from the end. The hole diameter is 2.3–3 mm, the top is countersinked by 4.5 mm. Two-component parquet glue is injected into the holes made.

It is convenient to pump glue using an empty tube of silicone or liquid nails, if its cone is intact and not cut off. Squeeze the piston back out using a steel bar, fill in the prepared batch of glue and use a gun to fill the holes as much as possible. The glue is very fluid and fills the space under the die, completely restoring strength in a day.

When laying parquet on a plywood backing, holes with a diameter of up to 3 mm are made in the dies to a depth of 10–12 mm. They are hammered into punched nails, the length of which is enough to sew the die and plywood right through. The heads of nails are sunk into the hole using a conical punch, or the die is shot with a pistol.

Parquet scraping

After the repair, the parquet is smoothed by scraping with a gradual reduction in the grain size of the abrasive material. At the first stage of alignment, a tape of 60–80 grit is used, then two passes with a tape of 160 grit and a finishing pass with a tape of 240 grit. Finally, a glossy shine is applied to the parquet using 400 grit tape.

It is preferable to hire a sander or rent a sander. If you want to save money, you can use hand grinders, although this significantly increases the processing time.

Most of the work can be done using a good quality belt sander with a belt speed of at least 300 m / min. At the first stage of processing, the varnish is cleaned until a tree appears and no deeper, then a complete cleaning of the room from dust is carried out.

At the second stage, a uniform lightening of the tree and the appearance of a woody texture are achieved. It is important that the finer the processing, the lighter and more sweeping the movement of the tool should be. After clarification, the coating is refined in the corners using a deltoid grinder with 160 grit paper, then 240 grit. The dust generated during the scraping process must be collected and stored.

Putty and sanding

Pure dust is mixed with a liquid polymerizer to obtain a mass with the consistency of fresh honey. This composition is used to putty the parquet: pouring a little liquid paste onto the surface, rub it thoroughly with a stainless steel spatula, achieving the deepest possible penetration into the cracks and repair holes. If, after drying, the putty shrinks, the parquet is cleaned with a spatula and putty again until the surface is perfectly flat.

After puttying, the parquet is cycled again, first with a 240 grit tape, then twice brought to shine with a 400 grit tape. When stripping, it is important to open the wood texture as much as possible and achieve good alignment. The manifestation of some defects of puttying is possible, they are eliminated in place and sanded again.

Varnishing and polishing

Before varnishing the parquet, you need to wait two days for 80% of the dust to settle. In the morning of the third day, you need to wipe the tree with a very slightly moistened rag, and after 5-6 hours start applying varnish.

The first layer is performed with a special primer varnish. Apply it with a roller and collect it only from the bath, and not pour it onto the floor, so that spots of different saturation do not appear. With an interval of a day, another 2-3 layers of parquet varnish are applied, before each application, the surface is treated with a felt disk to rip off adhering dust.

The notorious transparency, reminiscent of young amber, can only be achieved with a varnish layer of 0.4–0.6 mm. These are four to five layers of varnish, laid on top of each other as tightly as possible, this is the whole importance of intermediate polishing. Finish with two coats of a two-component topcoat, completely transparent and highly abrasion resistant.