If you've got a floating floor of any
sort, whether that's laminate, LVP, or some other material, anything
with those interlocking planks, I'm gonna show you some ways that you can
take care of these unsightly gaps that arise, especially in the
winter when things contract. So I'm gonna show you two methods.
The first one is really cheap. Will cost you just a few bucks. And the
second one is most likely free for you, using stuff that you already
have from around the house. The first one we're gonna look at
is one of these end to end gaps. So I've got a gap here that's just
been growing little by little as the weather's gotten colder, and
this is a pretty easy one to fix. So the first method I'll show you, you just need a 2x4 and I've cut
this one to maybe about 20 inches. And I've also run some 220 grit
sandpaper over one side. I want a nice, smooth surface that I can adhere to.
You're also gonna need a hammer for this. And then the only other thing you
need is some double-sided tape. Now I pick this stuff up on Amazon.
This is really well reviewed, and this is called Easy Life Go. And it costs at least at the time that
I bought it about $11 for this roll. So not too bad. And all we need to do is we're basically
gonna adhere this to one of the planks. Now, also be sure to look around at your
planks to see which ones need to move. It might make more sense to move
it in one direction than the other. Like in my case, I have a banister
right here. And so I don't want to, there's really no room for me to move
it this way going in this direction, I really have to move this
one over towards this one, so I'm gonna basically be placing this
over on this side and moving it over. So we're gonna peel off some of this tape. I actually never used this stuff before. I'm used to the traditional
double sided tape, but this one had such good reviews
I thought we had to give it a try. I'm gonna use two pieces for this board. And. Need to peel up. Okay. There's one. All right, there's our second one.
We're gonna put our smooth side down. I almost forgot. We do need to vacuum out this gap to make
sure there's no debris stuck in there. So I've got my vacuum cleaner here. All. Right. That looks good and clean. So now we're gonna use the smooth side
of our board here, and I've got a carpet, a rug here. I'm gonna give myself a little more
room so that I can put it right there and then put some good weight on
there to get some good adhesion. Okay. That's good. And basically, that's all we're gonna need to do to
get started, to move this thing over. Now with that in place, I'm just gonna use the hammer to knock
this over and keep an eye on this gap. Watch this will close right up. There we go. Nice and tight. Now you don't want to overdo it cuz you
could create a little peak and we don't want that. So right there is nice
and tight. I can leave that be. Now that's that gap, but
that's gonna create of course, a gap on the end of this plank right here. So I need to go to the next one and do
the same thing and just keep moving these over. Now, this double-sided
tape usually sticks really well. So it's helpful to have a chisel or
you can also use a putty spatula, but something with a little more strength
to it is good. There we go. Okay. That actually came up pretty easy. And I'm gonna actually see if I can re
use these pieces further on down the line. So here's the
new gap that's created. Let me see if I can get
these ones up and reuse them. Excellent. Okay. Again, smooth side of our board down. Put some good weight on there. Let's see if we can close up that gap. All right, that should do it. Here we go. Look at that closed right up. And now here at the end of the row, I
actually just cut one of these strips. I'm just, I've just cut these shorter
strips so that I can put 'em here And then I'll put another one next to it. These are actually quite dirty
already. So we'll see if this works, but this idea here is because
we need a little room. I'm gonna push it down
pretty hard there again, kind of kneel on it and then use the side
of the hammer to try to hit away from the wall. Look at that, piece of cake. Again, I'm still using these same pieces of
tape that I used all the way along. Pretty cool. It's the next day now. And last night I wanted to try out
something that the double-sided tape manufacturer here says you can do. They say you can actually just
rinse this off in the sink, get all the debris off and then
let it air dry. So I did that, let it sit on the counter overnight. And this morning I came back
and they looked like this. They were clean and very sticky again,
just like they said they would be, which is pretty cool. So this one's a little dirtier because
I actually used this this morning to fix another gap in the floor.
So it works as advertised. So definitely pretty cool and something
that most double-sided tape cannot do. For our second method, this is the one using mostly stuff
you probably have around the house. We're gonna use the same 2x4, which again is sanded down to about a
220 grit to give a nice, smooth surface. We're gonna use a roll of painters
tape, a bit of super glue, and it's important that this
stuff is the liquid kind. We don't want gel or anything like that,
but any cheap super glue will work, I've got a bottle of this or a little, uh, little bit of this and then
some lock tight as well. Either one will work just great. I've got a sponge that's moisturized on
one side and then a little spray bottle of water. And then we've got our
hammer and chisel just like before. So we're gonna actually apply some tape to about this much. And again, I'm doing a shorter version cuz
I need it to sit right here. I'm gonna try to knock this
piece and fill this gap, which I've already vacuumed. I'm gonna
try to knock this into the other one. So I'm gonna tape this up. I'm gonna overlap each piece just to
make sure we don't get any glue seeping through. Not that important on the 2x4,
but definitely important on the floor. So there's that one. And I
left a little gap right there. I'm gonna cover that up just in case.
I'll just go all the way through. Right there is great. All right. Now I'm gonna push these down really well, make sure that there's no gaps. We don't want any super glue getting
through to the floor, especially. All right. Um, I'm actually gonna now tear this back
cause I don't want to fill in that gap with painters tape it all. Here we go. Okay, next I'm just gonna put some of
this super glue on one side. Here we go. Apply it fairly liberally
here. Nice little zigzag. And then on this side
you've got two options. You can wet it with a and
get a kind of moist there. And what the water does is it acts as an
activator to the super glue to help it dry or cure even faster. And I actually
like a little more water than that. That's why I've got the spray
bottle here. There we go. Get it good and wet and
then apply this right here. Gonna kneel down on this to let it
form a good bond with my weight on it. And I'll sit here for, you
know, 10 seconds at least, uh, maybe 20 or 30 just to be safe. So I'm gonna keep one knee
with weight down on this side. And just like before we're gonna
kind of use the side of the hammer. Since we have limited room, keep an eye
on this gap here and watch it close up. There we go. A few hits
and that is good to go. So just like before we'll use the chisel
to gently pry this off and another cool thing with this blue and glue,
this technique, by the way, my friend Robert from Rask
Guitars showed me this. He makes guitars every day and
uses this technique quite a bit. And some times There you go, you can actually get the, the glue will hold the tape together
and then you can reuse this piece. So I can put this tape back down and
move the board somewhere else to fix another gap if I need to. So that's the second technique
and hopefully will cost
you little to no money to do. So hopefully you found that advice
helpful and can fix the gaps in your flooring. Now, if you wanna learn more about some of
the cool stuff that painters tape can do, you can check out this video
right here. Thanks for watching.
