Repairing wood floors

These instructions are for replacing a damaged or missing board in a hardwood floor. In our case, several boards were already missing so we didn’t have to remove the first one. In this project the tools used were: hammer, chisel, square, router, prybar and table saw.

However if you have to remove one board out of the middle of your floor you would first use a circular saw to cut lengthwise down the entire board and then make a parallel cut in the same board about ½ inch away.  Now you can use a chisel or drill bit to cut out the center of that board. Now you can pry out each side of the board.

Once your first board is removed, you can proceed as we did in this project.

To remove additional boards (after the first one) use a square (ideally a speed square) as a guide for the router equipped with a straight cutting bit and make a shallow cut across the board to be removed being careful to not cut into adjacent boards.  Once you have the shallow groove to establish the line you can deepen the router cut in stages until you cut through the thickness of the board. Be careful to keep a perfect edge on the board that will stay in place (see photos). Use a chisel as needed to square up the cut.  Repeat at the other end of the board and remove the board using a prybar. Work gently to pry it out despite the nails.  If you are removing several boards, stagger the ends to disguise the patched area.

Remove any nails or debris from the subfloor.  Lay in felt paper or some other barrier between the subfloor and hardwood.  Cut new flooring pieces to length and nail in place (with whatever nailing technique is used on the rest of your floor).

The last board is the tricky one.  Using a table saw, rip off the tongue and just the bottom edge under the groove so you can drop the piece into place. This piece will be face nailed in place.   Fill any visible nailheads and sand and refinish as explained in the other advice article.