DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

Hi everyone,

3 years ago I laid parquet flooring in my apartment, and after probably 1 to 2 years one of the panels became slightly warped or bent upwards (see image). The parquet itself consists of a base layer of wood with an oak top layer. It is hard to tell whether it is just this top layer that has 'popped up', but it seems not. I should also add that it is not the whole panel that is warped, just the end. It occurred to me that maybe I didn't leave enough space between the parquet and the wall so when the room temperature changes maybe the panel expanded and therefore popped up. However, I thought I was quite careful about this when I laid it and tried to leave the recommended gap so I don't think so. The parquet itself is from Kahrs and is the sort that clicks together. When it happened I contacted 2 floor repair companies (I should add I live in Norway so things tend to be very expensive here) and they said that I would have to replace the panel and then have the whole floor polished to avoid colour dfferences. For that they were going to charge about £1500 (the room is about 24m2 or 260 ft2). I thought this was excessive seeing as the flooring itself for that room wasn't much more than that. I can live with it, but now I want to sell the apartment so want to fix the issue. I have tried researching how to fix it with limited success. I have read that it may be possible to soften the wood by heating it, with an iron for example, and then putting something heavy on top until it bends back down. I went to my local DIY store and the guy there said this wouldn't work as heat expands the wood which is the opposite of what I want to do. He thought maybe I could squeeze some glue underneath and then weight it down. I don't think this is possible as the gap between the warped panel and the neighbouring one is tiny.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Hopefully there is a solution that doesn't require me to replace the damaged panel (unless it is possible to cut it out somehow). I do have spare panels upstairs, but to replace the damaged one by taking out all the other panels first would be problematic as after putting the flooring down we installed a fire place which sits on top of the parquet in the corner of the room and so this would also need to be taken out.

Thanks in advance
Tom

Sometimes you have to break eggs to make an omlette Tom and the only way to repair this "invisibly" is to use a very sharp scraper and/or blade to remove the surface layer of this panel all together. You may not need to remove it all as it could be possible to cut across the panelat 90 degrees and just remove 300mm or so. This will of coures introduce another "joint" so it should be done with the visual effects in mind.

Once you have prised up a suitable section of the panel, use some contsct adhesive to relay but trim a tiny sliver from the side first. This particular panel has obvuoiusly warped as you say so a tiny bit of an expansion gap shouldprevent this happening again. Good luck and do let us know how you get on

Thanks very much for the advice. I just want to clarify a couple of things before I try it out. My understanding of your tip was to basically to cut the affected section out with a sharp knife, and glue in a new section (I prefer that option even at the cost of an extra joint). I was a bit confused when you stated to remove just the 'surface layer'. Do you think therefore that the base layer is unaffected? I am also a bit worried about how simple it is to just remove this top layer and leave the base layer untouched. I would also have to cut the top layer out from the replacement panel so unless they were both perfectly cut (which seems unlikely to me) the result wouldn't be totally flat would it? I have attached 2 new photos which I think show the problem better (one a close up of the damaged panel, and one of the panels in their pack to see the original state).

Anyway I would greatly appreciate you clearing up my confusion.
Thanks again
Tom