Flood Damage! What to do with a maple floor?

[Dev Emch]

O.K. First of all, I am not happy. On inspection of a property I am restoring for sale, I found that the heating system failed and flooded the entire lower half of the structure. Major damage! The lower floor has carpet ontop of concrete.

The only damage to the upper floor was the kitchen in which I installed a new brass, walnut and maple floor. Major Damage! The floor was installed but not yet sanded and finished out.

About 1/4 of the floor was heavily soaked and is still very wet and stained from boiler water. This is the area around the radiator failure. The rest was affected and the wood has expanded resulting in gaps. Also there is a slight cup to the 3.25 in floor boards.

So the question is what to do? Do I remove the floor including the 4 inch high tripper pops and throw it out? Do I replace the floor with tile and lick my wounds? Or should I pry up every single floor board, sticker them for month or so to dry out and then run them through my planer to level out the tops? Also note that I need to run them through on the bottom as well in case the cup is bad enough to keep the board from laying flat. Then use this stock to start afresh?

[Dan Forman]

Dev---Nothing to offer except my condolence about this mess. Hope you find the best way through it.

Dan

[Karl Laustrup]

Dev, sorry to hear about the problems. From what you've said I see several solutions, depending on the time frame of selling the house.

If I was thinking of using the damaged flooring, I don't think I'd use it in this house. I'd put a new floor in and sticker, dry and rework the old for use in another project. What you put in place of the current is a toss up.

My goal would be to get the house on the market ASAP. The maple flooring could hopefully be used on another project, returning some of the loss suffered in the current house.

Just my $1.398 worth of suggestions.

Keep us updated and how about some pics?

Karl

[tod evans]

dev,before i ripped up the floor i`d put the heat and air movement to it, get it dried then have your finisher look at it to see if it can be salvaged. if you put it down with "t"nails and have tar paper over advantek it very well may be salvagable....02 tod

[Stan Thigpen]

Sorry to hear about your disaster, Dev. Just out of curiosity, how was the brass used in your maple and walnut flooring?

[Steve Clardy]

Like tod suggested. Get some air flowing in there and get it dried out first. Then go from there.

[Dave Fifield]

Dev, I had an oak floor that suffered a similar accident once. All the boards warped badly so the joints opened and the floor was uneven. It looked terrible. However, after a few months of drying in place, the floor went right back to its original shape, all the joints closed up again and it looked just like it did before.

So, if you have time to wait (which it doesn't sound like you do if you're readying it for sale), let it dry slowly in situ and it should return to it's original shape. After it's flat again, you'll have to re-sand it to remove the staining which, hopefully, won't be too deep.

If you don't want to wait, I'd go with your plan to rip it out and either start over with new stock or kiln dry it and re-mill it.

Good luck!