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Written by: Christine

• Water Damage Hardwood Floor
• Water Damaged Floor Boards
• Fixing Water Damaged Hardwood Floors

Water Damage Hardwood Floor

Probably one of the worst things that can happen to a hardwood floor is to have water get into it. As the old saying goes, wood and water don't mix! Hardwood flooring is an investment for your home and keeping it looking great is an important aspect in regular hardwood flooring maintenance. Water damage can come from anywhere. Leaking pipes in and under your sink can accumulate under the hardwood flooring in front of your sink. Dishwasher's can clog up forcing a load of water onto your hardwood flooring. Washing machines and laundry tubs can overflow onto your hardwood flooring. Even toilets can have slow leaks that are hard to detect.

Hardwood Floor Repair Water Damage

When water damage occurs to a hardwood floor there will be signs. If you have a flood from over flowing laundry tubs or dish washers, the evidence is obvious. When this happens you should mop up as much water as possible and dry the wood from the top the best you can. Place fans to blow onto the wood for further drying out the wood and air around the hardwood flooring. Dehumidifiers are a great idea too. Slow leaks that spread under your hardwood flooring are harder to detect. Sometimes faucets can leak for years causing all sorts of damage below the surface of the hardwood flooring.

Water damaged hardwood flooring will most likely show up as cupping floor boards. That's where the hardwood flooring has raised edges. As the hardwood flooring becomes saturated with moisture the edges will start to rise up. This is called cupping. With too much water, the damage can be too extensive to be fixed without replacing boards. With a smaller amount of water the wood floor can go back down as the wood dries out. Sometimes time and dryness will allow the hardwood flooring to settle back down to it's original shape. This can take months because very little air is circulating under the hardwood flooring. Lots of times it won't settle back down. When the hardwood flooring won't go back down to it's original shape than most likely it needs to be replaced.

Water Damaged Floor Boards

When the hardwood flooring is damaged beyond what will reassert itself, then the water damaged floor boards will need to be torn out and replaced. Once the floor boards are removed a moisture reading must take place to ensure the subfloor is dry enough to handle new wood. If the subfloor is still too wet, too high in moisture content, then time, fans and lower humidity in the home will need to slowly dry the floor to an acceptable level. Once the moisture content in the subfloor is within 2% of the new wood to be installed then the hardwood floor repair can begin. Fixing water damaged hardwood floors is something Boardwalk Floors excels in. Boardwalk Floors can perform any and all repairs to water damaged hardwood flooring.

Fixing Water Damaged Hardwood Floors

Once the water damaged floor boards are removed and the subfloor moisture level is at an acceptable level then the hardwood flooring repair can be done. New hardwood flooring is interlaced into the existing undamaged part of the hardwood floor. If the current hardwood floor is a prefinished hardwood floor then Boardwalk Floors can install the same flooring and make it look brand new (there will be a slight difference in color between the newly installed boards and the old boards due to oxidation from the sun). Remember, it's very important to have whatever caused the leak in the first place to be fixed before any repair to the existing hardwood takes place or else the new floor make suffer the same fate as the old floor!

If the existing hardwood floor is a site finished wood floor then unfinished hardwood flooring will be interlaced into the existing floor. Then the whole floor should be sanded down and refinished so everything matches. Water damaged hardwood flooring is not the end of the world. Boardwalk Floors has the expertise and experience to be able to handle any hardwood floor repair whether it's from water damage or from any other type of damage such as cracking, splitting, gouging or surface failure.

Subfloor Water Damage Repair

Boardwalk Floors can also repair subfloors that have been damaged by water. It's very common to have damaged subfloors under the hardwood flooring due to the fact that water gets trapped between the hardwood floor and the base floor. With very little air flow between the two floors the water just sucks up into the hardwood flooring and soaks into the subfloor.

 

Call Boardwalk Floors today for water damage hardwood flooring repair! 248-854-2027