Get Rid of Squeaky Floors!
July 7, 2009 6:46 am home, home owner, repair, sellingOften I show properties with squeaky hardwoods, especially older homes. Through time, use and humidity, floorboards seem to have a way of moving themselves into a creaky state. Here’s an easy how-to video on making the noise disappear. I found the talcum powder trick very interesting. That explains why some of the properties over 100 years old have a white residue around the edges of the boards!
Your “No Bull” Realtor,
Kathy Smith
Russell & Jeffcoat Realtors, Inc.
(888) 808-4Moo ext. 0
(803) 781-5729
http://www.kathy.smith.net/
July 7th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
After watching the video on “How to Fix Squeaky Floorboards” I would have say after being in the remodeling business for over 30+ years I disagreed on the method being shown to fix a squeaky floorboard and other things that I noticed in the video.
What caught my attention were two things. First it appeared that some of the softwood floors were replaced – it was easily seen by the differences in the color of the floorboards. On which this could be staged area for the purpose of demonstration and not an actually squeaky floor. Secondly and most importantly, when the individual stepped on the squeak floorboard, that this particular board sagged below the adjacent (end-to-end) floorboard that’s resting on and attached to the floor joist. If there’s no problem with the top of the floor joist and the floorboard are at the same thickness, then when the board was stepped on it should be at the same level plane as the rest of the floor. This was not the case in the video.
Also while I can see both common and finished nails were used on the finish floor, I’m curious on why such hardware were used and why are screws with heads being used on a finished floor in the first place?
It appears the floor joist has structural damage that will require some repairs before the squeaky floor can be properly fixed. There are many different types of special squeaky floor hardware on the marked today that will do a better job in helping stop annoying floor squeaks than using standard screws as shown in the video.
While doing some research on the subject matter I landed on http://www.mysqueakyfloors.com that displayed three different products to help me eliminate floor squeaks in three different ways: through finished hardwood floors and stairs, from the underside of the floor, and through carpeted floors. For over 10 years now I’ve being using these special squeaky floor hardware products to help eliminate squeaks for my own person use and for my own customers. I would never use or recommend using powder, common nails, or screws to fix a squeaky floor as shown in the video.