I have original soft pine flooring in the kitchen of my 1930’s house that has seen better days. There are definite spaces between some of the planks and the varnish has worn off completely in some places. I’d like to re-do the floor and fill in the cracks and use the most eco-friendly treatments available. Any suggestions??
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I don't know what your climate is but around here, filling the cracks in a floor can be disastorous. If you fill when the boards are shrunk from dryness, when they swell, the edges of the wood will be crushed because the filler is harder than the pine. If you use softer filler, it will be squeezed out to make ridges.
Conversely, If you fill when the wood is at it's fullest swelling from ambient moisture, then it will fit loose and fall out when the wood shrinks.
The old way of dealing with this was to wax the floor. The wax can fill the cracks but it is soft so when it gets squeezed out gradually, walking across the floor will wear it down and buff it out so no ridges appear. but nobody likes to wax a floor every six months so we usually just leave the gaps open.
With a hardwood and narrowerer strips there is less gapping and you can sometimes get away with filling it.
Excellence is its own reward!
Thanks for your helpfullness. We might try waxing.
If you are going to go that way, I would recommend that you sand it all even down to bare wood and put on a couple coats of polyurethene or shellac first, the the bi-annual wax.
Excellence is its own reward!
Another remedy is to use rope between the boards as in the pioneer days, stain to match and then seal the floor. This will allow for expansion and contraction.