Do the wooden floors in your home squeak and creak with every step you take? While most homeowners love their wooden floors, squeaking and creaking is a common problem. If your wooden floors are ancient, it may be that they’ll need some TLC from a professional to silence their complaining.
But it’s also possible that there’s much you can do yourself to turn down the volume. One or more of the following simple steps may help to quiet the cacophony:
- Paste Wax Lube: The natural cycle of the seasons creates variations in the amount of moisture contained within wooden floors. More moisture causes the wood to swell; less moisture causes the wood to contract. This cycle of expansion and contraction causes the tongue-and-groove joints between boards to open and close, promoting loose fits that lead to squeaks. One simple solution that may help considerably is to apply a paste wax to the joints. Adding that lubrication may be enough to silence the noise – at least for a while.
- Fill Gaps: Sometimes the source of the squeaking is a small gap that exists between the floorboards and the supporting joists beneath. If that’s the cause of your noisy floors, try filling that gap with an adhesive. Purchase a quality construction-grade adhesive (the kind that comes in a plastic tube), and apply a bead of adhesive to the gap. Apply the adhesive to the entire length of the joist. Once the adhesive has dried, it should restrict the movement of the board, which should in turn reduce the noise.
- Add Fasteners: It may be that your floor just simply needs more fasteners to restrict the movement of the boards as you walk across them. In that case, you can try beefing up the structure by adding more fasteners at the points that are generating noise. Go beneath the floor, and drive screws up through the joist-flooring structure. Make certain, of course, that the screws aren’t long enough to protrude above the surface of the floor. If you can’t access the underside of the floor, an alternative is to use snap-off screws (available at most any hardware store). The snap-off screws can be driven in from the top, and should snap-off below the surface, leaving the shaft of the screw hidden from view.
Sometimes Simple Steps Aren’t Enough…
Sometimes wooden floors simply accumulate enough age and wear-and-tear that they need some professional care. But if your floor hasn’t reached that point of decrepitude just yet, it may be that one or more of the tips above will help to bring some peace and quiet to your life. Won’t that silence be golden?