Parque floor

[Mqvc8]

I pulled up our carpets and noticed that we have parque flooring and have a few questions on refinishing. First the house was built in the 1950's. The floor is uneven and squeeks in certain areas. I had a few estimates of approx $3.00 a sqft to sand and resurface the floors. They said that once the floors are sanded and polyurthaned most of the squeeks will go away. Will they?? Also I pulled a few boards out that were lifting and noticed the sub floor nails were popping. The guys said they would nail the boards down where needed. The floors are in pretty good shape beside the squeeks and the popped boards, are they worth it? Someone told me I should leave them alone and buff them and just use a floor cleaner to clean them up. I don't know what to do. I don't want to waste $3,000 on a floor that will squeek and having the boards pop in afew years. Any suggestions????

[Aurora]

Is their access to the floor joists under the floor? If you have access to the floor joists under the floor, say from the basement, you could drive screws at a 45 degree angle through the floor joists into the floor underlayment to fasten the floor down firmly to stop the squeaking. It's doubtful that the squeaking is coming from the loose parquet floor on top of the subfloor.

[Mqvc8]

Yes I do have access from the crawl space. I'll give it a try. Thanks

[pushkins]

I agree it is very doubtful that the "squeaks" your hearing is coming from the parquet flooring. Most often it comes from the sub floor as that is what ultimately has the give in it when nails "pop". The nails shouldn't be re nailed they should be hammered down and screws added to hold the sub floor better.
As mentioned by the previous poster using screws up from the basement is a great solution, all you need is someone above to walk on the floor and you underneath marking the spots that squeak. Make sure your screws are NOT too long (I've seen that mistake plenty of times).

Buffing the floors is not something that anyone can make a call on without seeing the existing quality of the parquet floors. I've worked on one house that all we did was polished them (after 15 years of being covered with carpet) yet at most it requires floors to be sanded back and re polyurethane, especially if water or pets found their way onto the carpet.

[Aurora]

There is another alternative for screwing down the subfloor in the event that you do not have access to the floor joists from below.

There are special floor screws that can be used to screw into the floor from the floor surface but which break off below the floor surface so that there is no exposed head showing from the surface. You can get them here:

http://www.mcfeelys.com/product.asp?productID=SNM-3320

They are not exactly cheap but they do work quite well. Of course, if you have loose parquet you could remove the parquet and just use regular screws to resecure the subfloor to the joists. Relay the parquet over the subfloor to cover up the screw heads.

[Mqvc8]

Thanks for the input. Could I use a finish nailer and shot the nail through the parque and the subfloor?

[pushkins]

A finish nail will not be strong enough to hold the sub floor down for very long (if at all).

[Aurora]

Think about the source of your squeak problem. The nails which are holding your subfloor to the floor joists have, for whatever reason, lost their holding power and have allowed the subfloor to move up and down when you step on the floor. The squeaking is most likely being caused by the friction of the subfloor on the loose nails. If you shoot a new finish nail through the subfloor and into the floor joists you are just adding more nails which will eventually loosen and add to the squeak. Additionally, you need to draw the subfloor tight to the joists to eliminate the travel of the subfloor. Screws will draw the subfloor tight to the floor joists and will not loosen over time.

[Mqvc8]

After some thought, we have decided not to have the floors resurfaced. We'll just clean them and throw a few rugs down for now, then in the future replace them with new floors. Another question I have, what is a good cleaner to use to get the dirt and grime off? Is there a wood restoreer I should use? Also there are a few black spots ( from a dog I guess), is there a way to get rid of them??

Thanks again