Parquety flooring is simply beautiful! When you restore your parquet flooring completely, you ensure that your house undergoes a splendid transformation. At the same time, the value of your house increases. However, many people don't choose these decorative floors because they need maintenance. You have to take good care of them and engage in routine maintenance to ensure that they look great at all times. This article will educate you about the restoration and repair of your parquet flooring so that you do most of the maintenance yourself and cut down costs.
Look for Damaged, Loose or Missing Blocks
The first step to restoration is inspection. Inspect your entire floor and see if there is any damage. If you find missing or loose blocks in your floor, you should know about them right from the start. How do you find out? You just walk on the floor and check if you feel any movement. Also, knocking on the wood and listening for a hollow sound will help you. If there indeed are missing or loose blocks, you have to replace them. Be very careful while doing this so that you don't hurt the integrity of the other blocks. Doing it in haste or doing it carelessly can cause you to ruin your entire flooring! You should also make sure that you buy the right sized blocks to replace the existing blocks. Take the measurements to be sure. The type of wood should also be same, needless to say.
Check for Residue from an Old Flooring Adhesive
Now is the time to apply the adhesive but there is a small step before that. You should check the blocks and the underfloor to make sure they are clean. This is especially important if your flooring is old. Old parquetry floors usually contain Bitumen, which is a black tar adhesive, on the underfloor. This adhesive needs to be removed and cleaned because it is not used today. Before applying the new adhesive, you should be sure you get rid of all Bitumen in the floor. This step will ensure proper bonding.
Correct any Problems with an Uneven Floor
Another problem with older homes is an uneven floor. When you start removing the flooring pieces, you might realize the unevenness of your underfloor. An acrylic-levelling compound will solve this problem. Each coating should be of about 3mm. this will level the floor up pretty easily.
Take your Time to Prevent Gaps in the Pattern
When you reinstall your floor blocks, make sure you don't try changing the pattern. Otherwise, gaps will appear and the flooring won't look nice. Even if you are highly cautious, there may be a few gaps in the floor. While it is extremely difficult to avoid these gaps, being patient can minimize them considerably. Also, make sure you clean the underflood before starting. This will also prevent gaps.
Sanding Your Restored Parquet Floor
Once you restore your floor, you should sand it. Here, be sure to sand the whole floor and not just the area that you restored. Wait for the adhesive to set first and then move onto sanding. In case you had to remove the Bitumen adhesive, you should wait even longer. If you don't be patient and give enough time for the adhesive to set, sanding will result in the removal of the newly restored blocks. As a result, your entire floor will be ruined. There should be no adhesive or wax on your floor prior to sanding. If you could vacuum the floor before sanding, that'd be great.
Adding the Finishing Touches to your Parquet Floor
Sanding with the grain pattern is the way to go. However, there are a few patterns that make this difficult. One example is the herringbone pattern. In such cases, you should sand the parquetry floor over and over. To start off with grit 40 sandpaper is ideal for the edges. If there are any gaps that are easily visible, make sure you fill them with wood filler or sand dust during your last bout of sanding. Otherwise, you could go for floor plastering using a flat trowel and wood chips mixture. Once you finish filling the gaps, wait for half an hour. Then, sand it again. During this sanding round, you should use 120 grit sanding paper. Lastly, vacuum the entire floor and apply one coat of wood finish. This coat will give your beautiful flooring the required shine.
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James Watkins is a professional parquetry flooring expert with 15 years experience in parquetry and wood flooring.For more organic gardening tips please visit his webiste http://parquetryfloor.com/
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