Fixing hardwood floorwith anil holes

[john smith III]

Hi All,

We bought a 1951 ranch house with hardwood (oak) floors. The floors had never been finished and lived under carpet for the entire history of the house.

The thing is, the previous owner had nailed the padding / carpet to the floor using nails and when I say nailed I mean it looks like someone got drunk, picked up a nailing gun and let loose- there are nails everywhere at just completely random places. Some are brads but most have *very* noticeable heads
that have been driven clear through the supporting boards of the floor- in the basement you can see them poking through the basement ceiling / underside of the floor.

I would like to not replace the floor, not least of all because it's otherwise very beautiful with some 12-15ft 2-1/4in planks fitted tightly together. Replacing it would be not less than 5k (1300 sq ft) for something decent from LL and then there's the labor etc.

I could try to pass the look off as "rustic" or "authentic" or "reclaimed" or whatever, but realistically, it just looks baaaad.


I am willing to pull the nails out /pound them out from underneath. But then I have holes in the floor. Filling these with any of the various putty wood fillers is just going to look tacky; plus, that stuff ages differently than the wood and takes up dirt and stains differently etc., so even if it starts out looking passable over time it will be a source of regret.

I have had a variety of ideas. My main idea is to treat it as an art project. Try "connecting the dots" with some sort of random design inlay or try to mill a lot of narrow oak or maybe contrasting strips and end up with a sort of one-of-a-kind random stripped look. I am up for any of these projects and I don't care what it looks like in the end except that it has to look *good*.

So I thought I would ask here and see if anyone had a simpler solution or had had this problem and solved it somehow. Perhaps someone has a crazy creative design or idea that *just might work* .

I have looked for inlay designs or just art and designs online which might be applied to this problem and tried to imagine what the floor would look like if I copied them, but so far nothing has caught my imagination.

This is a completely open-ended question and I will gladly entertain any idea, opinion, notion, POV , insight, war-story or crazy idea anyone has.

Thanks in advance.

[scott vroom]

Wood filler/floor sander/finish. The finish will prevent dirt/stains from penetrating the filler. It is what it is.....turning it into an "art project" will just focus attention on the problem. Are there knots in the flooring? If so, match the filler to the knots not the wood.

Pictures would help.

[David Nelson1]

I'd just fill them will some off color epoxy as Scott mention match them to a few knots if you any. If not its just a feature. Nothing to sweat especially if you sand and finish the floor properly.

[Dell Littlefield]

Since it is oak, there is a good chance the wood has stained darker around the nail holes. If so, you might want to bleach them out with oxalic acid (wood bleach) before filling.

[John Piwaron]

I second the oxalic acid. steel nails leave black stains around the holes.

I saw the last carpet installer do what you describe - the apparent drunken nailing. He was using a tack hammer though to hold the padding down. Those little nails/staple aren't very big. As to your holes, I'd pull all the nails, bleach anything that needs bleaching, sand and stain to get the color evened due to the wood bleach, then fill the holes to match. And then some really good floor varnish.

You didn't ask for it but I might recommend Pratt & Lambert #38 for the varnish. I removed carpet from the steps leading to my attic and then stripped and refinished all the wood. The stair treads got stained and then 2 coats of P&L #38. That's been around 10 years now and still looks new.

[keith micinski]

No matter what you do or use the one thing your not going to be able to do is make the floor look like a "new floor" Refinished floors don't look like fresh floors they look like floors that have been refinished. Character marks and stains are part of the process. I personally think that refinished floors look terrible and if budget dictates I try and replace them. That having been said there are plenty of people that love refinished floors and think what I just said is heresy and old floors with their character marks are beautiful. You have to decide what look you want or what look you can afford. Trying to make an old floor look like anything other then an old floor is just not possible so I would celebrate the old floor for what it is, refinish it properly and live with it. I have also never understood the point of using putty trying to match the wood or even trying to be different and match knots. Neither of these look better, actually they both probably look worse, then a nail hole and they cost money and time. The nail hole was free character, come up with a story if someone asks about how those holes are actually rare worm holes and make this a very exotic special kind of oak floor because of it