How Hard is it to Repair a Damaged Hardwood Floor?

Repairing a hardwood floor is actually not too difficult, in most cases. If you were a good enough DIY enthusiast to install the hardwood floor yourself, you’ll find repairing it an enjoyably challenging project.

If you don’t have much in the way of time or carpentry skills, however, you may want to have such work professionally done by a handyman. Hardwood floors are very durable, but there are few cases where they need outright replacement. When they do, the project is usually undertaken because the hardwood floor is heavily damaged, splintering, or buckling (deforming) due to the structural shifts in your house that naturally happen over time.

If you have one damaged board in your hardwood floor, you can repair it without too much work. You’ll need to saw out the section of board that is damaged and to cut an equally-sized length to replace it in the hardwood floor. After the patch is fastened down, you can finish it to match the look of the floor around it.

Most of the time, there is at least one such patch visible in an older hardwood floor. Patches can last a long time and help you avoid the need for a full replacement.

Replacing an entire hardwood floor is much more involved. The entire floor has to be taken up, the subfloor redone and the new floor laid down. Finishing, of course, also needs to be done. To help avoid this, homeowners are usually content to just replace what sections of the hardwood floor become damaged. This sometimes gives a floor a bit of character and, when excellent carpenters do the work, it’s sometimes completely unnoticeable.

Durability, of course, is one of the major selling points of this flooring and a hardwood floor can last a long time with patching.