Hardwood Floor Repair

[ssmjlm]

AKA, am I looking at refinishing my whole first floor now?   

We noticed yesterday that our fridge was leaking from the bottom freezer.  I thought we had caught it early, but today, the floor where the puddle was has buckled.  We just had the fridge repaired, but now we need to figure out the floor.

DH is going to call our homeowners insurance tomorrow to figure out if it's worth it to make a claim.  I know a local refinisher that does amazing work, so I may reach out to him to see if he can come take a look.

Our house is barely 5 years old.  While we were never really happy with the final finish on the floors from the builders sub and my dog's licking has done a number, this was obviously not in the plans.  Our hardwood is our entire first floor, so yeah...

[Pilsy]

How big of a spot are we talking about?

We had a real Christmas tree one year (never again!), and after the tree stand leaked, we had a 4-square-foot area that was all warped. It dried out within a week or so and is perfectly fine now. Maybe you'll get lucky, too! I'd set up a dehumidifier and a fan and reassess in a few days.

[ssmjlm]

Jul 13, 2021 20:08:35 GMT -5 Pilsy said:

How big of a spot are we talking about?

We had a real Christmas tree one year (never again!), and after the tree stand leaked, we had a 4-square-foot area that was all warped. It dried out within a week or so and is perfectly fine now. Maybe you'll get lucky, too! I'd set up a dehumidifier and a fan and reassess in a few days.

It looks to really only be 1 board.  It looks slightly better this morning.  I really don't want to end up with a huge project over one board that goes under the fridge, KWIM?

I mean, we've discussed probably at the 8-10 year mark re-doing the floors since our senior dog will be gone and hopefully we're through a follow-on puppy stage.

[lessel]

We had a dishwasher leak when we bought our house... the sellers had temp occupancy for a month after the sale but they left a week early. But I was busy with life chaos that week, so didn't get to check out the house until 4 days later. And the dishwasher had leaked and puddled on the kitchen floor in that time. In that time we also discovered that the fridge had a slow leak and there was damage under the fridge too. After the floors dried out (about a month) we had a floor guy we worked with to do hardwoods at our old house out. He was able to rip up the damaged area and replace. He basically stained and sanded the kitchen into the breakfast nook area too to blend everything. You can't tell anything happened. I want to say it cost about $700 (before wood prices were insane though).

[Pilsy]

ssmjlm, agreed. Give it a little longer and if it's still in rough shape and you think it's worth addressing at all, it sounds like a very isolated project is doable!

I hope it continues to improve through the weekend. I feel like the summer humidity might slow that progress, so you might have to be extra patient.