Hardwood Floor Repair in Edmonton

What board repair covers

Repair work runs from filling and colour-matching a gouge to lifting damaged boards out and weaving new ones in. On a house built between 1960 and 1980, which is most of the hardwood we see in Edmonton, the hard part is the match. Two and a quarter inch red oak strip was the standard of that era and it is still made, but the wood has aged forty to sixty years in your house: it has ambered, it has taken on the tone of whatever finish went on last, and a brand new board next to it reads as a bright stripe until the whole floor is finished over top.

That is why repair is usually the first step of a recoat or a full sand, not a job on its own. The fresh finish across the whole room is what makes a patched board disappear. We will still do a standalone repair if that is genuinely what you want, but we will tell you first that you are likely to see the seam.

When board repair alone is enough

Three cracked boards by the patio door, and the rest of the floor still beads water. Replace those boards, blend the finish on that section, small bill. The test is whether the repair will read as one when we are done. Under a rug in a back bedroom, nobody looks. In the middle of an open main floor, everybody does.

Same on a spill caught early. If the boards dried without cupping and the stain has not travelled, we cut out what is dark and leave the rest alone.

When it has to become a full refinish

New oak and forty-year-old oak are two different colours, and no stain hides that seam under an old top coat. Once the repair sits in a sightline, the only way to make the floor look like one floor is to sand all of it and finish it as one.

If the traffic lane between the kitchen and the back door is already down to bare wood, a patch repair fixes the cracked board and leaves you standing on the actual problem.

When the floor is genuinely not worth saving

Here are the numbers. Hardwood Floors Magazine, the National Wood Flooring Association's publication, says most solid wood floors can be sanded six to eight times in their service life, and a traditional sand takes off 1/32 inch to 1/16 inch each time.

The hard line is 3/32 inch, or 2.38 mm. Below that, the NWFA's resand guidance says the floor should not be sanded. That 2019 threshold still stands, and it is measurable: an automotive feeler gauge in a gap between boards reads the thickness down to the top of the tongue, at a register or under a transition moulding.

Engineered floors are where this bites. The same source puts engineered wear layers between 1/16 inch and a quarter inch, and warns that on some the wear layer sits shallower than the tongue, so the gauge reading flatters the floor. Under 3/32 inch, a full sand goes through the veneer into the core.

A rotten subfloor ends it differently. If the sheathing or joists have gone soft, this is not a finishing problem. The floor comes out, the structure gets fixed, and what goes back down is new. We tell you that on the visit, and we will not sell you a refinish to cover it.

Why an Edmonton floor gaps in winter

Gaps opening between boards in January are the most common repair call we get, and most of them are not damage. The National Wood Flooring Association calls seasonal gaps that appear and disappear normal. A gap still open through a humid summer is the one worth looking at.

Outdoor humidity is not the number doing it. Environment and Climate Change Canada's 1991 to 2020 normals for Edmonton International Airport put average afternoon outdoor humidity at 69.7% in January and 40.1% in May, so on paper January is the damp month. But January air here averages -12.3°C, and cold air carries very little actual moisture. Heat it to room temperature and the relative humidity collapses. The floor dries out, the boards shrink across their width, and the gaps appear.

Summer runs it backwards. The boards take the moisture back up and swell, and the NWFA describes cupping as the edges of a board sitting higher than its centre.

The humidity your floor wants, and the humidity your windows allow

The NWFA asks for 30% to 50% relative humidity year round, and so does Health Canada. In an Edmonton January those two agree with each other and disagree with your house.

Natural Resources Canada's Table 9-1 sets the highest indoor humidity you can hold at 21°C without condensation forming on the glass. At -20°C outside, that is 24% on older double glazing and 67% on triple-glazed low-E. In a 1970s house with the original windows, chasing 30% will frost the frames and rot the sills long before it saves your floor.

So get a hygrometer, aim for the top of what your windows tolerate rather than the number in the guideline, and back the humidifier off the moment the glass fogs. Let winter gaps be winter gaps. If they are still open in August, have us look at the floor.

Why we wait before sanding

Sand a floor at a seasonal extreme and you lock that shape into it. An NWFA inspector traced a case of crowning, where board centres end up sitting proud of the edges, to a floor that was slightly cupped on the day it was sanded.

So we check moisture content and let the boards settle before the drum touches them. It is the least dramatic thing on this page and it is the reason a floor still looks flat two summers later.