How to Prevent Squeaking Wood Floors

Wood floors are beautiful and highly attractive. They require care and work to keep them looking their best. Squeaks can develop in your floors due to poor craftsmanship or failure of flooring adhesive. There are simple steps you can take to cure those squeaks in the night.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Walk along the floor and find the points at which it squeaks. Placing a finishing nail at these points will tend to reduce the squeaks as these come from floor boards rubbing together or from the wood slipping against the nail that is already in the floor but is not holding.

2. Drive a coarse thread screw through the floorboard into the floor joist. This remedy is for large areas of squeaking. It is possible that the builder failed to apply a flooring adhesive to the subfloor before placing the wood floor down. Failure to use floor adhesive allows the subfloor and the wood top layer to rub against each other and generate a squeak.

3. Rub linseed oil into the wood floor in the area of the squeak. One cause of squeaks can be due to the changes of humidity and temperature. Both of these cause the wood in the floor to swell and shrink, which will allow the boards to rub against each other. Preserve your wood floor by using linseed or other type of oil. The oil will seal the wood and prevent the effects of weather changes from affecting your floor.

4. Use a towel to rub in talcum powder or powdered soapstone to the cracks between boards. These will serve as lubricants easing the friction between boards and reducing the chances of generating a squeak.