When buying a home, new settlers usually begin repairs immediately, even if a new building is purchased. And even more so if the apartment was bought in the secondary housing market or inherited from parents. Do-it-yourself apartment renovation or with the involvement of specialists is an almost inevitable reality of any new home in our country. Housing is given a modern look by installing plasterboard partitions, spotlights, multi-level ceilings.
Possible problems
Flooring in these apartments is a separate issue. In old prefabricated houses, their device is no different in variety. This is usually linoleum or boards on top of a simple concrete screed. Repair of the floor in Khrushchev is most often required immediately after settlement.
If you got such a floor, you should try to level the surface and get rid of the eternal dust. Nowadays, usually the old screed is cleaned to the ground and a new one is arranged, especially since there is no shortage of materials for this. Minor defects can be repaired - putty irregularities with tile glue.
And if you have wooden floors? The coating of boards tends to dry out over time, due to friction against each other, the floorboards make a creak. Usually, owners try to eliminate it by screwing the boards with screws or pouring glue into the drilled holes. Such measures are far from always effective. When planning a floor repair in Khrushchev, get ready for certain difficulties.
Sometimes the need for restoration of wooden floors arises due to a flood that happened due to one's own fault or because of neighbors from above. If the floors are seriously damaged, it becomes clear that major repairs cannot be avoided.
You can see the wooden floors of the Khrushchev before the repair.
Getting Started Repair
So, let's repair. When planning it, you should decide what you need - to bring the wooden floor to a divine state or use the coating as a basis for the finishing layer. It depends on whether you will repair the existing floor or completely replace it. Perhaps just enough to eliminate the cracks in the wooden floor.
Work begins with inspection and, if necessary, dismantling. Floorboards should be carefully examined, assessed condition. Intact boards will come in handy when building a new coating.
Then you need to clear the place for work and buy the material in the right amount. A list of everything that will go to repair the floor, price and quantity is being specified in advance. You will need bars of 50 to 50 cm in size, a floorboard and a plastic film as a vapor barrier. When repairing the floor, it may be insulated, which is important for apartments on lower floors, especially in cold areas. Mineral wool boards are used as insulation . They must be tight, keep in shape. On the packaging of such mineral wool, the size is always indicated, so it is easy to calculate the required amount.
Sequencing
At the beginning of the repair, a polyethylene film is spread on the floor, the panels of which should come into each other by about 20 cm. This is done to prevent moisture from the lower rooms.
Mineral wool is cut into strips of about 3-4 centimeters thick, which are fastened around the perimeter of each room. Why install the bars at a distance slightly less than the width of the insulation boards. The evenness of the installation is controlled by the level. Between them, insulating plates are laid, which should fit tightly into the rectangles between the bars.
How to deal with the boards depends on whether it will be a draft layer or the final one. If you need to level the old wooden floor by spreading a new coating on top, the boards can be laid out at small intervals. Then the next step will be laying on top of the boards sheets of fiberboard or plywood as a base for a decorative coating. On the photo located above in the article - wooden floors after repair.
If the floorboards creak
To avoid the creaking of floorboards for as long as possible, fasten them to the screws. If you do not plan to cover the floorboards with anything from above, you should pay special attention to their quality. They need to be strengthened as tightly as possible with alignment in height. Materials must be dry.
After laying, the boards are sanded, sometimes repeatedly, achieving perfect evenness of the surface. Before the grinding process, it is required to putty the last remaining cracks. Such polished and varnished wooden floors look very prestigious and modern.
If the reason was the usual drying, the boards should be tested for strength - there should be no deflection and squeaking. You may need to tighten the floorboards and further secure them with self-tapping screws. The next step is to putty cracks and small cracks. An inexpensive and reliable option is acrylic putty for wood. Of the tools you only need a spatula. After complete drying, clean all places of putty application.
How to close up cracks in a wooden floor?
There are many ways to prepare an old plank floor for flooring. For example, prepare a mixture for leveling from sawdust and PVA glue or buy a finished putty. A standard sand and cement screed can be used. The so-called self - leveling mixtures are applied to a clean prepared surface and leveled with guide beacons. But this method has a drawback - the long drying time of most compounds.
Often, defects associated with drying boards come from the low importance of air. Another reason is improperly laid cover, deformation of the lags. Having found the cause of the defect, you can decide how to close up the cracks in the wooden floor.
When the lags are to blame
If you suspect that the creak is due to a lag defect, this can only be checked by dismantling the entire cover. The removed bars are checked for strength, unsuitable must be replaced. Then the boards are re-laid and firmly fixed to the bars. In this case, significant differences in height (up to ten millimeters) may appear. You can align the boards with a planer.
A mixture for sealing wide gaps is prepared by mixing sawdust with PVA glue. The pre-prepared composition is applied to the required places, after drying, the grinding stage begins. Cracks can also be filled with polyurethane foam, the foamy residues of which, after drying, are cut with an ordinary clerical knife. After that, the entire surface is treated with acrylic putty.
Thus, we see that there are enough options for fixing cracks in the wooden floor. For example, the elimination of large cracks can be done using a tourniquet, and an adhesive composition is required. In case of small cracks, it is worth buying acrylic primer and sealant for the floor, as well as concrete contact. First, each gap is treated with soil, then with a concrete contact (the surface becomes rough at the same time), then a tourniquet or tow, impregnated with sealant, becomes clogged. After drying, the floor cycles.
Another way to repair
And what else to fix the cracks in the wooden floor? If you do not want to pave the floors, you can choose a simpler method. Try to chant the boards together. The classic way will require a drill, a long drill, a hammer, a tape measure and dowels - thin long wooden sticks of circular cross section.
Using a drill, holes are drilled in two adjacent floorboards at an angle of 45 degrees. Each of them should begin in one board and end in another. A dowel, previously smeared with glue, is clogged into it. Its protruding part is cut down and cleaned flush. A neighboring hole is drilled indented about a quarter meter from the side of the other board, so that the dowels are perpendicular to each other, and so on until they are fully strengthened.
A more modern method involves the presence of self-tapping screws, as well as a special drill, with which holes are drilled to seal their heads. At the last stage, all irregularities are eliminated.
What else can be done
The sealing of cracks in the wooden floor can be done by the so-called soft and hard methods. For soft twine is used (best of all natural), as well as polymer glue, a wooden wedge and a hammer. The twine is pre-soaked in glue, then with a hammer and a wedge inserted between the boards. After polymerization of the adhesive (about a day later), the remaining irregularities are sealed with putty.
The advantage of this glue is its elasticity. Even when drying takes place, the cracks no longer expand. After about a day, you need to clean the surface, and you can start painting.
The most reliable way
The tough embedment method requires tools such as a planer, hammer, and hand saw. From the thin wooden planks, the required number of wedges is cut, the width of which is adjusted to the size of the slit, then the wedges are carefully hammered into the slots with the long hammer using a hammer. The width of the gap is different everywhere, and you will need a fit with a plane. The hard method requires a lot of strength and patience, but it is the most reliable.
Before inserting the prepared bar into the slot, glue is poured there. They withstand the day, clean the cracks, and you can start painting.
If you are planning an apartment renovation with your own hands, you should know that there are more exotic ways, for example, filling in cracks with hot bitumen. But it is quite expensive, dirty and time-consuming. It is known that a cardinal way to mask all the cracks and bumps in the floor is to cover it with plywood. The effect of this method will be the most lasting.