How to Patch a Chipped Wood Floor | Ask This Old House

[Music] and we decided once we added this we um wound up with a chip in the floor and a squishy floorboard oh yeah i saw it move well looks like you got someone tried to patch this area right here i got a silly question would you happen to have that chip we do you do wow we weren't sure what to do with it and hoping to be able to fix the floor at some point well let's see how it fits oh look at that oh that's nice i can glue that right in there and i'll show you how to do that and we can fix that but it'll be a little different way let me get some tools and we can get started great thank you okay now before i glue the chip back in i want to refasten this floor back down to the subfloor so i want to try to do this without seeing the fastener what i'm going to do is i'm going to take a drill and i'm going to drill a hole right through the chipped out piece and then drive a screw in there now we're going to use a polyurethane glue and what i want to do is i actually want to put some water in the hole because that will make the glue activate better not only for the wood but for the screw okay next thing i'm going to do is take some of the glue and drive it into the hole that's running down there which is good take my screw put it into the hole into the wet glue and drive it down let's stop the floor from moving that's great now i use the polyurethane glue in the hole because it will expand on itself it'll also glue the screw to the wood but i'm going to use just a carpenter's glue or a wood glue and i want to try to get it in there to cover all of the raw wood i'm going to slide it in push it down and take a wet rag i want to wipe off all the excess because i don't want it to show that's incredible it's as good as new it's good as new so i'll just hold that down for a little bit until the glue starts to set and then we can work on the next one all right now we're going to patch this section of the floor right here but it's going to be patched a completely different way because there's so much damage i have to cut out this section of the floor and insert a dutchman now a dutchman will sit on a mortise that doesn't go all the way through the board creates a shelf that a thin piece of your flooring will sit on now when you're trying to patch a floor it's important that you have the same kind of wood and luckily you save some of the flooring that was left over in the basement you first want to match the grain not the stain so if you look at the grain of the floor right here it's nice and tight and it's darker and it's opened up a little bit here and really opened up here so what i did is i looked at your boards and i cut out a section that has a tight grain to it right here so when i look at that grain it's similar to the grain right here if i turn the board over this is an open grain and that patch would really stand out now when i stain this it's not going to stain exactly the same it never does so what i'm going to do is i want to cut our dutchman out of this piece right here okay the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to take this tongue off and true up this one edge so i've straightened out that edge with my plane and now i want to make the strip about an inch to an inch and a quarter wide so eyeball that make a straight line okay so now i've got a rough cut there and i want to true that up with my plane so now that's better now what i want to do is i want i want to try to make it thinner okay so i'm going to rip it down this way and make it thinner that might be the best thing i see all day really all right so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to try to true this up see how it's uneven so i'm going to put a straight edge on this side okay straight line to follow here and the same thing on the other side like that now i'm going to take my plane and try to make the board equal in thickness all right i've cut my dutchman to rough size width thickness and squared one end okay that's impressive okay so the next thing i want to do is i want to get a length for my dutchman so i look at the damage section of the floor and see about how far it goes and i'm going to go just a little bit further and i'm going to mark the length so you measure that first don't measure the floor no i'm going to cut the patch to size once i cut the patch to size i'll lay it on the floor over the damaged section trace it and mortise out the floor okay lightly score it cut my length also mark that going to need to remove this section of the floor not down almost the thickness of this piece now i can chisel it all out but what i'm going to do first to save a little time is i'm actually going to use a forstner bit which actually leaves a flat bottom at the bottom so all right so the mortise is cut okay now that it's cut i want to see if my piece fits in it and it's going to go in like this because that's how i cut it now that fits tight what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to plane just a little bit off of one edge because i want it to slide into that opening okay so i want to pitch it slightly to bevel it so that when it goes in the hole it'll be loose at the bottom but tight at the top i'm gonna drop it into the hole look at that that's incredible it's pretty good oh it's beautiful all right now before i glue it i want to take it out and put some stain on it because if i get glue on top of the surface here the stain won't take okay so i have to take the piece out all right when you have soft wood like this pine it's always good to use a pre-stainer so that way the stain will be more balanced when it's on top of the surface all right it's been about five minutes and now we'll wipe on some stain wipe it on put it on a little bit heavy and we'll just let that sit on there for a few minutes see if i leave a little bit of it with the texture of the rag you actually put a little bit of a grain oh that looks great okay and i just want to get the sides and the bottom of the raw wood all covered all right so we've got all our raw wood covered with glue and now we're going to set our dutchman in the mortise push it in make it flush that looks great all right so now we'll take our damp rag and wipe off the excess glue all right manny your patch is in and it's all stained what do you think it's absolutely incredible i didn't know it was there i would have to look really hard to find it well that's a good thing all right that's all we can do today okay now what has to happen the stain has to dry overnight okay next thing i want you to do is tape around the border of it with some painters tape and then put about two or three coats of poly on it remove the tape and it should blend right in okay thank you so much for coming we really appreciate it my pleasure

Channel: This Old House

Views: 1,276,985

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Episode, TV Show, DIY patch, chipped wood floor, floor, flooring, Tom Silva, dutchman, hand tools, this old house episode, all new this old house episode, this old house all new, new episode, how to fix a wood floor, fixing a wood floor, wood flooring, how to fix wood flooring, fixing wood flooring, fixing chipped wood floor

Id: DPGxCageub8

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2018