Anyone who has been through a renovation will tell you that it’s the tail end of the project that is most excruciating. Despite the financial pitfalls, nasty surprises and compromises, the finishing details can be the most frustrating especially after many weeks of visible progress.
While KA is still away on his other contract, I’m trying to make progress on the painting the bedroom floors. R and I disagree on leaving the worn-out wood surfaces in the hall (I want to keep the ‘attic’ surface; he wants to paint it out), but we both want to stick with historic colours for the guest rooms. Significant shrinkage of the planks and some slight sagging of the floor have left some wide gaps between planks – only highlighted with the application of a flat colour. Following numerous recommendations online, I decided to try to fill them with rope before continuing to paint.
The first step is to clean out the gunk trapped between the planks. 175 years of compacted dirt came out in handfuls as I dragged the sharp end of a five-in-one tool across the joints. Unfortunately, there were no treasures to be found other than some rusty tack nails and some BB gun pellets. I kept the shop vac nearby to help keep the mess under control.
After a deep vacuuming and a thorough scrub, I decided to fill the constellations of nail holes in the planks – more imperfections highlighted by the paint. You can see from the photo above that the gaps are not a consistent width.
Some of the web articles I’ve read recommend using rope of different widths appropriate to the size of gap. I bought three different types of jute twine and a bundle of braided cotton. While coarse fibre rope or twine may be the better choice for clear-finished plank floors (apparently you can stain the rope to match your floor finish), the flat and consistent surface of the bleached cotton rope felt like the better choice in my situation since it will be painted over. Loose fibers on the surface of the twine could get messy.
With only the single-width of cotton rope, I couldn’t fill all the gaps in the floor. Some people recommend gluing rope into the joints or covering it with silicone or bathroom caulking. I prefer to wedge it into the joints without a permanent binder in case I need to remove it in future. I’ll have to source some other thicknesses of rope while in Toronto during the week.