Water Damaged Hardwood Floor in North Dallas - Yikes!
Water: the enemy of wood flooring. This is a fact of a hardwood floor’s life.
Several things may occur when water comes in contact with a wood floor for any length of time. This may occur from plumbing leaks, overflowing washing machines, rainwater invasion, or even chronic pet “accidents.”
Although one harmful effect can be damage to the finish, the most serious negative outcomes are buckling & cupping.
Don’t Panic! Your floor can often be saved!
Buckled flooring (see photo, right) needs to be replaced, but if the damage is not too extensive matching replacement flooring can be laced into the un-damaged wood.
When a solid hardwood floor becomes cupped, (see diagram below) it is possible to sand the flooring down to even it out.
Naturally, one must wait until the floor is completely dried before beginning this work, or the floor will end up worse than before.
After both fixes, the floors need to be be sanded and polyurethaned.
Recently The FloorMan ran into a serious buckling problem in a beautiful solid oak herringbone floor. Our craftsmen had to carefully remove the herringbone planks and replace them. Then they were able to sand and refinish the entire floor so it looked good as new.
It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that before repairing a floor the source of the problem must be found and dealt with. Otherwise it will continue to happen and you will be throwing good money after bad.
Chronic leaking into a concrete subfloor from an over-soaked outside garden (the drainspout didn’t go out far enough from the house) is one problem we’ve run into. Another was a below grade floor as the result of erosion (see May 6, 2011 blog).
The moral of the story? Keep water away from your wood, BUT if you can't, you can often save your fine hardwood floor.