Q: I purchased bamboo flooring from ifloor and had an installer lay the floors down. Unfortunately, he left pretty large gaps between some of the sections and it is very noticeable. Is there anything that can be used to fill the gaps? They are not wide enough for pieces of board, but too large for something like glue.
Also – he scratched the floor and tried to fix it by sanding it, which now has attracted tons of dirt and is just smudged black. Any ideas for a fix?
Yes, we made a mistake with the installer!
thanks!
Jill
I followed up with Jill a bit to get some extra help, here is what I asked:
For some basics, if you can at least tell me how wide the gap is (if its 2 or more credit cards in width this could cause a bit of worry). Also are these gaps around the entirety of the planks or only in specific spots (ends only or only certain areas of the home)?
Reply: There are two cracks which are definitely wider than two credit cards. They are both in the middle of the floor of the rooms — where the installer stopped and then picked up working later. With the black spot, he had scratched the floor, and then tried to sand it (eek) a bit and then, I think, put a sealer over that perhaps? He was trying to hide the scratch and now it looks much worse.
Any thoughts so far?
Thanks again
Jill
A: I am pretty dang sure I know what’s going on with the scratch. Most likely, your installer used a high grit sand paper (260-280 grit) to sand the scratch. To the touch it will feel smooth, but you are still abrading the floor, which means there are small areas where dirt or particulates can accumulate. More than likely, he used a cleaner and not an actual seal or layer of finish in that area, so the particulates have gathered and caused the discolored spot.
Now, there are two fixes to this problem. Depending on the size of this spot you can either mask off the surrounding area using painters tape, then sand lightly to remove the debris and add a bit of refresher (smaller spots for this scenario as it will have a different sheen than the rest of the floor) or replace the board entirely with another piece of bamboo flooring (if you have any spare flooring this would be great, as it should be acclimated to your home).
As far as the gaps go, more than likely your floor was not given enough acclimation time (let me know if you know otherwise though). Typically this problem occurs when a floor is installed before fully acclimating to a home and excess moisture in the floor is released as it dries to a similar moisture level of your home’s subfloor. This causes the boards to shrink ever so slightly and makes the gapping prevalent. How do I fix this? Good question! What you will want to do is test the moisture content of the bamboo itself, if its less than 6-8% than usually you can run a humidifier in your home to restore enough moisture to the air, which will in turn be absorbed by the bamboo, and remove some of the gapping as the floor expands slightly.
Wood flooring is much like you and I in a sense, it lives best in a climate of 65 degrees or so Fahrenheit with relative humidity (moisture in the air) of 30-40%. If your home has less moisture than this, then the flooring will naturally dry out some and shrink. If it has more moisture, it will expand and possibly swell.
