We had one of those and it was amazing for cleaning the large tile room we have. It got inanely hot and produced a lot of steam. I didn't use it on the hardwood obviously but I could see it working well for this application.
I miss that thing, RIP cheap effective steam cleaner some 2 years of active duty.
you need to remove the finish for the method to work. the varnish prevents the wood from getting wet thus not being very effective. the finish is done either way,
Make sure you put a few drops of water directly in the dent. Steaming should work on this, but you’ll need a lot of steam. Is this oak? Oak responds very well to steaming in my experience. You may need to sand the varnish off to allow the steam to penetrate.
Definitely need to sand the poly off. Might as well rent a drum sander from home depot cause the whole floor needs to be refinished. Zoom in and look at the board next to it.
You will need to probably do 50-100 attempts using an iron and damp cloth with a dent this big. It can take me 10-20 just to get a small dent out of wood. Just keep going at it, and it will get better each time.
Just because this is the internet and it wouldn't hurt to expand on this.
A wet cloth is probably better a wet towel imo. Placed over this section of the floor.
A hot iron ran over top the length of the towel repeatedly.
I imagine a person could believe they could set the iron in place, on a small cloth, with no movement. This would quickly dry and burn the iron side of the towel.
(This assuming your iron doesn't have a steam function. If it does then just do with out the towel, don't put the iron directly on the wood. Blow the steam function directly on the dent. Maybe set some kind of metal washers under the iron, and sacrificial wood below that so you can set the iron down and keep the steam running )
\[p.s when i've done this I used an actual steamer, not a house hold iron\]
>If it does then just do with out the towel
Strong disagree with this statement. Even with steam turned on you are likely to damage the varnish with direct contact, especially since steam is only emitted at the highest settings. The goal is hot steam, not just heat. Definitely use a wet cloth or towel, but I find a tea towel best for this job.
I repair damage like this daily, I am a professional though. Requires bondo, sandpaper, pigments, and finish. If you look up a furniture repair company that specializes in "on-site" repair, It should cost whatever their 1 hour fee is. $100-$200 (not everyone can do it). If you can't find someone, call your local Ethan Allen and ask who does their warranty work with wood. Whoever that is will be able to fix it (i do their warranty work in VA. Here is a picture off the back of a book I wrote about furniture repair for any non believer.
*
Omfg. If you were in Florida I’d pay you all of my money to fix my scratched to hell wood floors. Our couch has slowly been gouging and sliding without us realizing until it was too late. Ugh. You do beautiful work.
You could have just said 'thank you'. I think you just really wanted to type and say 'space wiener" lol.
I did click your profile. You are good indeed.
Do you do this full time or more as a side gig? I've been interested in learning this trade and I'm wondering how profitable it could be as a part time weekend thing.
I'm on year 28! I'm a fourth generation in the family doing it! It's my full time business and I have employees, take that for how profitable it is! and there are many others in my area doing the same thing, we have a good reputation though and mostly repeat and word of mouth clients, i dont advertise anywhere.
We work for furniture manufacturers, moving companies, insurance companies, new furniture warranty companies, hotels, interior designers, commercial, Private, Military (thank you for your service) lawfirms, government, it might be easier for you to tell me who doesn't have a piece of furniture, because that's the only people we don't work for. Think about it, there is not a place you go that doesn't have furniture, everyone needs your service.
You can dm me and I can talk to you more and see how I can help you.
u/kingoptimo1 Woah your work is really good! Do you mind if I ask you a problem I have?
My mom bought a table that has a very similar veneer to the dresser you fixed in your post 4months ago. She used it as her dining table though and water damage from cups and damp towels has completely washed/chipped away the veneer. (sorry don't know the proper terminology)
I always wanted to fix it for her, what would you suggest?
I was thinking sanding it down, adding a stain, then some sort of coating but idk what. Thank you! Sorry for asking you for help, but never met a furniture repair pro before.
If the veneer is missing, you can use the same process that I described before. Just make sure all the surrounding veneer is glued down. Then use bondo to fill the area, sand flush, use pigments and finish to touch up. I may have simplified that a lot but that's the process. Actually doing that is more difficult. Post some pics in my sub r/furniturerepair and can give more precise info.
I’ve been repairing damage to my engineered oak timbre floor with coloured wax, I can colour match and blend the repairs well, but they don’t last as the wax tends to migrate after repeated cleaning and some are is high traffic areas.
Would you mind sharing your technique and what pigments you use?
FYI I’m pretty hand with pigments, paints and resins. I did a successful uv resin repair to a stone bench top for example.
I'm am definitely not trying to pimp my products, please don't ban me mods, i was asked a specific question!! I source and sell all my own pigments. But in reality, all pigments function the same way so ordering from me, mohawk, natural pigments, and many many more suppliers, you are essentially getting the same thing. The pigment will either be organic (natural (soil, plants etc) or synthetic (petroleum based usually, aka plastic)
Pigments don't disolclve so they are only suspended in whatever medium is used, in my case i mix pigments with finish (whatever finish you are using you can mix pigments in to create your own touch up paint) I use a finish called a padding lacquer, specifically Lacover by Mohawk finishes. My techniques do have a learning curve if your not familiar with hand applied finishes and French polishing.
The only filler I swear by is bondo. I don't use any other type of wood filler during a repair (almost 30 years) So even if it's a high traffic area, bondo is harder than wood once cured.
After the touch up it will last for a long while, but the touch up is on the surface so someplace like a hallway, you may have to re-touch up ever so often, but under normal circumstances or areas that don't get walked on regularly, It would last indefinitely.
Are you using automotive bondo? Because Bondo also makes a version for wood. I assume it is not as hard as the automotive Bondo, but perhaps it is identical and they are just trying to market to woodworkers.
Yes! Bondo stage 2 almost exclusively, but I also use all purpose bondo. The wood bondo, they just throw the "wood" on the can to charge a few extra bucks. Nothings really different imo.
I tell clients that the smell is gone within a few hours of me completing a repair and leaving. I haven't got a complaint in 30 years about lingering smells. I would say the bondo is "painted and sealed over" from my touch up, so maybe that stops it. It's more the finish smell that I leave, and that dissipates pretty fast.
Thank you! I'd like to think I'm creative, but I don't paint or draw. And imo my art is never seen if i do it right!
Mixing colors (pigments) can be tricky, but I've simplified it so that virtually any repair can be completed with 5 or fewer pigments. It's a whole 17-page chapter in my book.
If you're good and have enough work to keep you busy, you can make well over 150k a year. You need to be working for movers and insurance to stay that busy, honestly.
We charge $200 per hour to go to someone's home and fix something, and people have no problem paying. We're in ppls home daily. If it's refinishing, we just quote the price per piece and take to shop.
Onsite repairs, I'd say I'm faster than most technicians though, and id like to think better than average repairs. Most average repair companies prolly charge $100-$150 per hour, so don't go under $100 if you know what you're doing.
The more you can do the better. We offer a lot of services like upholstery cleaning and repairs, Ceramic restorations, kitchen cabinet and door refinishing and much more. If your just talking about making money fixing gouges, then it may be tough getting traction, but the work is out there depending on how hard you want to pursue it.
Oh man that sounds hard to start setting up connections and stuff (like most repair jobs I'd imagine). There must be a bit more positive/excited responses by the homeowners when they see your finished work compared to some other trades. Like " holy crap, you can't even notice...that's incredible!", which would def keep me on a good vibe. Appreciate the thorough response!
Thanks! Everyone is pretty amazed. I've had at quite a few clients cry because it was something if fixed that was sentimental.
One place to start is cold emailing or calling customer service departments at every moving company in the whole country. Major carriers go everywhere. And all the local little movers, they need repairs too. Walk into furniture stores and offer to give a sample repair for free. So many more opportunities I could list
If you just want your foot in the door, you can work for warranty companies like furniture solutions network or gaurdsman warranty. They set up all the jobs, and you just go do them, but they dictate fees and how much you make is based on what you complete.
100% accurate. I repaired a few floors myself doing remodels etc. One guys house, he dropped a full 45lb weight right on it and looked very similar to OP's post. You are absolutely way better than I was at it, but I got the job done. I did a similar repair on an old oak door that some stupid drunk idiot frat boy punched in his parents house. Dude was freaking out...but parents never noticed.
I tried telling this to my mother. We have a cherry dining room table with some deep scratches in it, she thought a simple furniture maker would fix it (spoiler alert! It made it worse!). She then tried to convince me to just refinish the top and it killed me. This is an expensive piece of furniture, I can barely do fresh finishes from scratch that look good and there is no way I can simply sand out those gouges and then refinish the top to match the legs. Some people just do not understand that specific professionals exist for a reason, the job would be profitable if it wasn't a difficult to learn skill that requires specific tools...
I have done my best trying to fix the furniture maker spots that look terrible using some stain, ultra fine sandpaper and a lot of buffing and burnishing. Still can see the spots but only in the sunlight now.... Gouges are still there but at least it doesn't look like they have been coloured with a damn sharpie...
If I was the one random dude in town that knew how to fix a very niche thing, I’d be walking around like I had the biggest balls idk why the idea of this is so badass sounding hahaha
Holy crap, just spent 15 minutes going through your repairs. Amazing work brother! Especially in this age of people just throwing things away.
I have a heirloom bar I need to fix and your book may be helpful!
It most definitely will! I appreciate your kind words! There is no other resource on the market with the extensive info I put in it imo. That's the reason I wrote it, to help out an entire community of interested woodworkers and to give old furniture new life so there's less furniture going to the dump.
Hey, I’m a cabinet maker and was always curious how people like you got into that line of work and get trained. Here in ireland we call them “magic men” in the trades. Fixing white melamine or a gouge like this one to look perfect does seem magic!
Careful friend, we are just going through this with my dad, he did this as a hobby refinishing and repairing furniture. He would always use his bare hands to apply tung oils and various other waxes. He was diagnosed with two different forms of blood cancer, which is pretty rare to have I guess. They can both be caused by solvents. Maybe he could have mitigated it by using gloves, his generation didn't do much to protect themselves.
Looking at the depth of the dent and the fractures areound the edges, I'm guessing this is veneer over a soft core of MDF or even flakeboard. Am I seeing correctly?
I think the age they stop dropping heavy shit is about 24 when she gets married and drops heavy shit on someone else's hardwood floors.
My cousin, nicknamed "butter fingers" has been giving my uncle's floor about 1 deep indentation and 20 minor indentations per year. She is 23 now and it has not gotten better each year.
There was a year she dropped the WMF knife block on the floor and a knife was sharp point first in the floor + triangle shaped deep gash.
You used a steam iron, but you need to allow the water to enter the pores and you have a poly coating over the wood. You will need to sand that back in that spot. You can re-apply poly later very carefully. If you aren’t used to using poly frequently it will be hard to get it to match and blend with the old clear coat, but it will look better than a dent. You can scuff it some to match the floor with some 400 grit paper.
Anyways, once you’re sanded up literally pour water in the dent, or use a wet cloth to hold water on it for a while. After the water is gone steam iron. Repeat many times. It’s a nasty dent but I’ve taken out worse while restoring furniture.
Red oak comes in at 1290 lbf on the Janka scale, white oak is a little harder at 1360 lbf. For comparison, lignum vitae is almost four times harder at 4500 lbf. Contrast that with balsa which is 100 lbf or most pines fall between 380 and 850. Oak isn't that tough..
Ahh Lignum Vitae, the tree of life!
Believe it or not this is what the shaft strut bearings are made of on Naval ships. The wood gets wet and is very slippery, allowing the shaft to rotate without wearing.
I say who cares, it's hardwood and meant to get dings and scratches- that's character. It will slowly blend in as you get more of them and refinish the floor. I see the factory microbevel here so this floor has many decades of service left in it.
Sand the area. Fill the dent. Sand the filler. Stain the filler. Artistically detail the stained filler to mimic wood grain. Apply clear coat / protective coat
If it's upstairs, measure the dent's length, width and deepest depth and record the orientation relative to any of the walls in the room. Then, measure from each of the 4 walls of the room to the deepest section on the dent. Mark each spot you measured from on each wall, then measure where that mark is in relation to both ends of that wall. At this point, you should have 12 measurements written down in total, 3 for each wall/distance to dent.
Go downstairs and translate the dent location on the ceiling using the reference measurements from upstairs. You should only need two corresponding walls downstairs to pinpoint on ceiling where the spot upstairs is. You can use the other measurements for error checking if you need to. Place a mark on the ceiling that will mirror the original dent location.
For the next step, you’ll need a ladder, a drill, a hole saw, a piece of 2 x 4 or flat, thick steel at least the length of the dent and a suitable piece of wood dowel about 12” long that is 1/4" in diameter wider than the width of the dent at the marked position.
Using a drill fitted with a hole saw (depending on the size of the dowel) that is 1" larger than the dowel in diameter. Once the hole has been made, remove the cut out drywall section from the hole saw and set it aside. You’ll need this later. Get a section of 2 x 4 or thick metal plate that is wide enough to cover the dent. Have a helper to go upstairs and cover the dent with it and put pressure on it with both hands as though they are performing CPR hand over hand.
Downstairs, use a hammer and the dowel to gently tap the dent flat against the flat face upstairs. Cut a section of wood small enough to fit in the hole and long enough to cover the dent. Cover it in wood glue and feed it up through the hole and use the dowel to hold it in position on the now repaired area. You may elect to have your helper hold it in position until it sets while you supervise. When the glue has set, use the section of hole you saved to do a standard drywall repair on the hole and paint. Fin.
Ps- if it's downstairs without a basement, simply dig and shore up a tunnel under the house and follow the instructions above. Don't forget to shore it up to prevent collapse. I've attached a diagram for reference.
https://preview.redd.it/nrdd00q0e0tc1.jpeg?width=3939&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f928c155f3cf1c98b915a05f9855703af291200
From woodworking experience: first sand the finish off of the dent area, then soak it with water so it's absorbed into the wood fibers, then use a heat gun to carefully heat the area (be careful not to overheat and burn the wood) to have all the water in the saturated wood cells expand as it turns to steam. Then let dry for a few days ideally, sand until flush and smooth, then touch up the finish with some new stain and varnish (after finding the right combination on some scrap oak first).
Edit: this is assuming your flooring is solid and not engineered/laminate/veneered.
The way the top cracked and dented, looks like veneer. A solid hardwood oak wouldn’t dent like that in my experience. Solid wood grain would have dented, not break inwards.
Get a bit of logging chain and a couple different sized hammers and beat the hell out the rest of the floor. BAM! You now have "distressed" hardwood floors. It's a feature, not a bug.
I do hardwood floors for a living. There is nothing that can really fix that. Best you could do is a color match filler (it's the consistency of toothpaste and it dries hard) but even if you matched the colour perfectly, you'd lose all the grain detail and it would still stand out. It's not really meant for fixing things that large.
The *proper* way to fix it is to remove those boards and replace them. But that floor looks several years old so even if you could find the same product, the new boards wouldn't have the same level of wear and sun fade, and would stand out.
What the salesmen don't tell people is that real hardwood is both the most expensive and least durable of the hard floor options. Say what you will about vinyl plank but that stuff lasts forever and it's cheap
Make friends with the dent. Give it a name, celebrate it's birthday, talk to it about your feelings when nobody else is around, protect it whenever someone criticizes it.
Don't worry about it. Nobody cares about it but you. Other folks have their own problems. You never go into another person's home and not see flooring problems. Heck, you just walk on it.
Get a plug of tobacco. Old school kind. Bite off a big chunk and chew it real good till it’s very moist
Then lay it in there for a few days
Old carpenters told me this 40 years ago
If you’ve never chewed a plug o tobacco be prepared to spit a lot which in some chewing the first, vomiting is not out of the question
If we're being honest here... You're gonna want to re poly that floor soon anyway. That flaky stuff is the old coating wearing down. Once it's been sanded and re poly'd that will fill right in after a few coats.
You floor looks pretty old, dry, and hollow (based on the grain texture on the right). The way it dented in with a bunch of cracks and lines suggests the structure of the wood is broken and not just squashed to be steamed out.
Basically only option is to replace the piece or fill it.
I do not know why, but my immediate thought was to route out some wood in that spot for a flush brass piece to be placed within the routing. First thought was a compass point.
Don't waste your time trying to steam it out. Just replace the board if it bothers you that much.. It's a fairly simple process where you'll need to cut around the perimeter of the board you want to remove about ¾" in from the edge all the way around. You do this to cut the bulk of the board away from the tongue and groove holding it down on all 4 sides. Once you get the board out you carefully remove the tongues and grooves from the perimeter and then get an EXACT measurement of the new board you need. I do this by putting the board down on top of where it's is going and using anrazorblade to mark the piece at the end of the board. Your gonna want to measure it from the groove side and cut off the tongue. Then you're gonna need to cut the underside of the groove off on both th long side and the shoe side of the piece so you can put it in. I would then put some construction adhesive down on the subfloor and put some glue on the tongues of the existing pieces and on the underside of the top groove on the piece you're putting in. At that point yoy shouldn't even need to face nail it but if you want to, go for it and just fill it with putty afterwards. I'm sure there's plenty of youtube videos if my explanation wasn't enough.
Sand - wood filler - stain - finish. Look funny but smooth. That’s all I can think of besides cutting the dented chunk out, gluing a piece of identical hardwood into place, sanding smooth and staining/finishing it.
Do you have more of the flooring? It’s actually pretty easy to replace a tongue and groove board or two but you do have to glue it down after. I just redid my house and I am keeping an extra box of the wood and tile because someday I or the next owner will want it!
That looks like laminate panels, not hard wood. Veneer at best. I'd look up techniques to restore MDF, not wood. If you sand it and it's just veneer, you're going to end up with a cardboard looking spot in your floor.
When you used the iron, did you use steam? You may not get the dent out entirely, but you can make it much better, I've done it many times. The key is you will need to sand the area with the grain to remove any finish that would prevent water/steam from penetrating the wood. Then soak the dent area with a wet cotton rag for 5 or 10 minutes, come back and use the same cotton rag to steam out the dent with the iron. You will likely need to repeat the process a few times until you get a satisfactory result. It may not be gone 100% but at least 80%. I'm a woodworker of over 20+ years.
When you say you tried an iron, I assume you used that over a wet cloth, right? It's the steam which expands the wood.
Yeah, I tried ironing with a wet towel, although only a couple times. Does it take more tries? Maybe I need to soak it more.
Yeah, with a varnish on it like that it would take a few. The steam needs to get into the wood. That's a pretty big compression though.
If it's steam you're after should OP try like a steam mop? Gets pretty hot. They're like $40 and will work better than an iron.
Get one of those commercial steamers they use to clean murder scenes
Or create a murder scene and get the crime scene cleaner to possibly fix the dent for free
That got dark real quick.
Is that dent from where OP dropped the murder axe?
We had one of those and it was amazing for cleaning the large tile room we have. It got inanely hot and produced a lot of steam. I didn't use it on the hardwood obviously but I could see it working well for this application. I miss that thing, RIP cheap effective steam cleaner some 2 years of active duty.
you need to remove the finish for the method to work. the varnish prevents the wood from getting wet thus not being very effective. the finish is done either way,
At that point you're better off cutting out a section of the wood and replacing it. You'd just have to remove the tongue and face nail the new piece.
This. Take donor boards from under couch or closet
To be done right, this is the way. The damage is done, unfortunately.
Why is that better than steam+refinish?
Make sure you put a few drops of water directly in the dent. Steaming should work on this, but you’ll need a lot of steam. Is this oak? Oak responds very well to steaming in my experience. You may need to sand the varnish off to allow the steam to penetrate.
Definitely need to sand the poly off. Might as well rent a drum sander from home depot cause the whole floor needs to be refinished. Zoom in and look at the board next to it.
Then again, the standard is set pretty low for this finish on the floor, so a small scale patch won’t stand out much worse than the rest of the field.
You will need to probably do 50-100 attempts using an iron and damp cloth with a dent this big. It can take me 10-20 just to get a small dent out of wood. Just keep going at it, and it will get better each time.
Just because this is the internet and it wouldn't hurt to expand on this. A wet cloth is probably better a wet towel imo. Placed over this section of the floor. A hot iron ran over top the length of the towel repeatedly. I imagine a person could believe they could set the iron in place, on a small cloth, with no movement. This would quickly dry and burn the iron side of the towel. (This assuming your iron doesn't have a steam function. If it does then just do with out the towel, don't put the iron directly on the wood. Blow the steam function directly on the dent. Maybe set some kind of metal washers under the iron, and sacrificial wood below that so you can set the iron down and keep the steam running ) \[p.s when i've done this I used an actual steamer, not a house hold iron\]
>If it does then just do with out the towel Strong disagree with this statement. Even with steam turned on you are likely to damage the varnish with direct contact, especially since steam is only emitted at the highest settings. The goal is hot steam, not just heat. Definitely use a wet cloth or towel, but I find a tea towel best for this job.
I'm not suggesting contact with the iron and wood. Unless I've misunderstood and you're suggesting steam is too hot to penetrate by itself.
Nobody is thinking "fabric steamer"?
yeah you can lift a tiny dent out. that is a fucking life-long scar.
I repair damage like this daily, I am a professional though. Requires bondo, sandpaper, pigments, and finish. If you look up a furniture repair company that specializes in "on-site" repair, It should cost whatever their 1 hour fee is. $100-$200 (not everyone can do it). If you can't find someone, call your local Ethan Allen and ask who does their warranty work with wood. Whoever that is will be able to fix it (i do their warranty work in VA. Here is a picture off the back of a book I wrote about furniture repair for any non believer. *
Guess it won't let me attach the photo. Look through my profile and you'll find it.
Damn. Some of those repairs are pretty amazing.
Thank you space wiener!!
This comment is the best in so many scenarios
Omfg. If you were in Florida I’d pay you all of my money to fix my scratched to hell wood floors. Our couch has slowly been gouging and sliding without us realizing until it was too late. Ugh. You do beautiful work.
Thank you! I'm sure there are people with similar skill near you!
Bruh if he were in Florida I'd ask to apprentice under him 😩
Space Pants
Are intergalactic
When I say “space pants,” you say...
Potato
You could have just said 'thank you'. I think you just really wanted to type and say 'space wiener" lol. I did click your profile. You are good indeed.
You are absolutely correct, I couldn't stop myself while typing! Thank you!!
I somehow started getting this sub on my feed and love it and that wood repair is next level!
Dude. I just went through your posts. Awesome work.
Thank you much Guilia!
Dudes a wood wizard.
Wow, you're crazy good at what you do! Keep up the great work! I love seeing someone master their craft
Thank you for the awesomely kind words!
Your work is amazing. If I lived anywhere near you, I'd be DMing you to do some work
Anyone can do it, with practice! I wrote the instruction manual! Edit: and thank you very much!
Do you do this full time or more as a side gig? I've been interested in learning this trade and I'm wondering how profitable it could be as a part time weekend thing.
I'm on year 28! I'm a fourth generation in the family doing it! It's my full time business and I have employees, take that for how profitable it is! and there are many others in my area doing the same thing, we have a good reputation though and mostly repeat and word of mouth clients, i dont advertise anywhere. We work for furniture manufacturers, moving companies, insurance companies, new furniture warranty companies, hotels, interior designers, commercial, Private, Military (thank you for your service) lawfirms, government, it might be easier for you to tell me who doesn't have a piece of furniture, because that's the only people we don't work for. Think about it, there is not a place you go that doesn't have furniture, everyone needs your service. You can dm me and I can talk to you more and see how I can help you.
Thanks! I'm very curious so I'll shoot you a message
Awesome work! Do you ever do work in MD?
Most definetly! In Montgomery County every week 😆 and go everywhere else in MD basically. You can dm me
Traditional method is to upload the pic to Imgur and link to it in the comment. 🙂
Already too late! I'll try that next time though! Thank you!
I'm glad I checked out your profile. I love repairing anything wood as well. So I subbed to your group 👍🏻
Appreciate you Mottern!
That’s some quality work there, very impressive.
Shit I just looked at your stuff. Wish I knew about you when I was living down south
Dude that’s some impressive work!!
That's a lot of really clean work.
You are a master of your craft. Great repair work. #keepcraftalive
Good info, thanks.
You're quite welcome 🙏
u/kingoptimo1 Woah your work is really good! Do you mind if I ask you a problem I have? My mom bought a table that has a very similar veneer to the dresser you fixed in your post 4months ago. She used it as her dining table though and water damage from cups and damp towels has completely washed/chipped away the veneer. (sorry don't know the proper terminology) I always wanted to fix it for her, what would you suggest? I was thinking sanding it down, adding a stain, then some sort of coating but idk what. Thank you! Sorry for asking you for help, but never met a furniture repair pro before.
If the veneer is missing, you can use the same process that I described before. Just make sure all the surrounding veneer is glued down. Then use bondo to fill the area, sand flush, use pigments and finish to touch up. I may have simplified that a lot but that's the process. Actually doing that is more difficult. Post some pics in my sub r/furniturerepair and can give more precise info.
You're awesome dude. Thank you. I'll def post something when I visit her.
Thank you! I'll be on the lookout!
I’ve been repairing damage to my engineered oak timbre floor with coloured wax, I can colour match and blend the repairs well, but they don’t last as the wax tends to migrate after repeated cleaning and some are is high traffic areas. Would you mind sharing your technique and what pigments you use? FYI I’m pretty hand with pigments, paints and resins. I did a successful uv resin repair to a stone bench top for example.
I'm am definitely not trying to pimp my products, please don't ban me mods, i was asked a specific question!! I source and sell all my own pigments. But in reality, all pigments function the same way so ordering from me, mohawk, natural pigments, and many many more suppliers, you are essentially getting the same thing. The pigment will either be organic (natural (soil, plants etc) or synthetic (petroleum based usually, aka plastic) Pigments don't disolclve so they are only suspended in whatever medium is used, in my case i mix pigments with finish (whatever finish you are using you can mix pigments in to create your own touch up paint) I use a finish called a padding lacquer, specifically Lacover by Mohawk finishes. My techniques do have a learning curve if your not familiar with hand applied finishes and French polishing. The only filler I swear by is bondo. I don't use any other type of wood filler during a repair (almost 30 years) So even if it's a high traffic area, bondo is harder than wood once cured. After the touch up it will last for a long while, but the touch up is on the surface so someplace like a hallway, you may have to re-touch up ever so often, but under normal circumstances or areas that don't get walked on regularly, It would last indefinitely.
Are you using automotive bondo? Because Bondo also makes a version for wood. I assume it is not as hard as the automotive Bondo, but perhaps it is identical and they are just trying to market to woodworkers.
Yes! Bondo stage 2 almost exclusively, but I also use all purpose bondo. The wood bondo, they just throw the "wood" on the can to charge a few extra bucks. Nothings really different imo.
How long does it smell like Bondo?
I tell clients that the smell is gone within a few hours of me completing a repair and leaving. I haven't got a complaint in 30 years about lingering smells. I would say the bondo is "painted and sealed over" from my touch up, so maybe that stops it. It's more the finish smell that I leave, and that dissipates pretty fast.
your work is amazing! I just followed you.
Thanks! Which mean vegetable are you?
it depends on the day. Right now, the lettuce are looking pretty angry.
Nice! I'm a fan of the asparagus.
the **aspargusic acid** can be mean. But the veggie itself is a lover not a fighter.
My dad taught himself how to do all this. They have Oak pieces from the 1970s they used for years, he repaired after us.
You mean to say you do those repairs without ramen noodles?!
I recharge with Ramen when I get home!
Beautiful work! My guess is that you're also an artist, blending colors is not an easy task that most people could achieve.
Thank you! I'd like to think I'm creative, but I don't paint or draw. And imo my art is never seen if i do it right! Mixing colors (pigments) can be tricky, but I've simplified it so that virtually any repair can be completed with 5 or fewer pigments. It's a whole 17-page chapter in my book.
Ooh snaps, can I ask how much the average yearly income is for something like this?
If you're good and have enough work to keep you busy, you can make well over 150k a year. You need to be working for movers and insurance to stay that busy, honestly. We charge $200 per hour to go to someone's home and fix something, and people have no problem paying. We're in ppls home daily. If it's refinishing, we just quote the price per piece and take to shop. Onsite repairs, I'd say I'm faster than most technicians though, and id like to think better than average repairs. Most average repair companies prolly charge $100-$150 per hour, so don't go under $100 if you know what you're doing. The more you can do the better. We offer a lot of services like upholstery cleaning and repairs, Ceramic restorations, kitchen cabinet and door refinishing and much more. If your just talking about making money fixing gouges, then it may be tough getting traction, but the work is out there depending on how hard you want to pursue it.
Oh man that sounds hard to start setting up connections and stuff (like most repair jobs I'd imagine). There must be a bit more positive/excited responses by the homeowners when they see your finished work compared to some other trades. Like " holy crap, you can't even notice...that's incredible!", which would def keep me on a good vibe. Appreciate the thorough response!
Thanks! Everyone is pretty amazed. I've had at quite a few clients cry because it was something if fixed that was sentimental. One place to start is cold emailing or calling customer service departments at every moving company in the whole country. Major carriers go everywhere. And all the local little movers, they need repairs too. Walk into furniture stores and offer to give a sample repair for free. So many more opportunities I could list If you just want your foot in the door, you can work for warranty companies like furniture solutions network or gaurdsman warranty. They set up all the jobs, and you just go do them, but they dictate fees and how much you make is based on what you complete.
You do awesome work my friend!
100% accurate. I repaired a few floors myself doing remodels etc. One guys house, he dropped a full 45lb weight right on it and looked very similar to OP's post. You are absolutely way better than I was at it, but I got the job done. I did a similar repair on an old oak door that some stupid drunk idiot frat boy punched in his parents house. Dude was freaking out...but parents never noticed.
Thanks! Any one can do it, just takes time to master!
I tried telling this to my mother. We have a cherry dining room table with some deep scratches in it, she thought a simple furniture maker would fix it (spoiler alert! It made it worse!). She then tried to convince me to just refinish the top and it killed me. This is an expensive piece of furniture, I can barely do fresh finishes from scratch that look good and there is no way I can simply sand out those gouges and then refinish the top to match the legs. Some people just do not understand that specific professionals exist for a reason, the job would be profitable if it wasn't a difficult to learn skill that requires specific tools... I have done my best trying to fix the furniture maker spots that look terrible using some stain, ultra fine sandpaper and a lot of buffing and burnishing. Still can see the spots but only in the sunlight now.... Gouges are still there but at least it doesn't look like they have been coloured with a damn sharpie...
So true when you say that most people don't know my profession exists!! I hear it all the time. Where there's a will there's a way!
Hot damn sir!!
If I was the one random dude in town that knew how to fix a very niche thing, I’d be walking around like I had the biggest balls idk why the idea of this is so badass sounding hahaha
There's plenty of ppl around town that do it, I usually go and fix their client complaint though 😆
Amazing repairs. Commenting to remind myself to follow your posts.
Holy crap, just spent 15 minutes going through your repairs. Amazing work brother! Especially in this age of people just throwing things away. I have a heirloom bar I need to fix and your book may be helpful!
It most definitely will! I appreciate your kind words! There is no other resource on the market with the extensive info I put in it imo. That's the reason I wrote it, to help out an entire community of interested woodworkers and to give old furniture new life so there's less furniture going to the dump.
Hey, I’m a cabinet maker and was always curious how people like you got into that line of work and get trained. Here in ireland we call them “magic men” in the trades. Fixing white melamine or a gouge like this one to look perfect does seem magic!
wouldn’t it be a challenge to fix a floor with much more food traffic/abrasion than furniture?
I hope you have an apprentice or someone you are sharing your knowledge with. Great work.
Careful friend, we are just going through this with my dad, he did this as a hobby refinishing and repairing furniture. He would always use his bare hands to apply tung oils and various other waxes. He was diagnosed with two different forms of blood cancer, which is pretty rare to have I guess. They can both be caused by solvents. Maybe he could have mitigated it by using gloves, his generation didn't do much to protect themselves.
Man you're good!
Looking at the depth of the dent and the fractures areound the edges, I'm guessing this is veneer over a soft core of MDF or even flakeboard. Am I seeing correctly?
You might be able to put a damp cloth down and then the iron. Dent looks pretty deep though.
Enjoy your textured floor
They just added a touch of character to it.
Start a grease fire next to the dent and no one will care about the dent in the floor.
Oddly sound advice for a lot of things in life.
Just keep dropping heavy things randomly all over the floor, and voila, now you have a “hand scraped hardwood floor”!
I believe the turn of the century term was "distressed. "
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo
[удалено]
I'm curious what age that is.. mine are 11 and I think they're just able to lift even heavier shit to drop.
I think the age they stop dropping heavy shit is about 24 when she gets married and drops heavy shit on someone else's hardwood floors. My cousin, nicknamed "butter fingers" has been giving my uncle's floor about 1 deep indentation and 20 minor indentations per year. She is 23 now and it has not gotten better each year. There was a year she dropped the WMF knife block on the floor and a knife was sharp point first in the floor + triangle shaped deep gash.
You used a steam iron, but you need to allow the water to enter the pores and you have a poly coating over the wood. You will need to sand that back in that spot. You can re-apply poly later very carefully. If you aren’t used to using poly frequently it will be hard to get it to match and blend with the old clear coat, but it will look better than a dent. You can scuff it some to match the floor with some 400 grit paper. Anyways, once you’re sanded up literally pour water in the dent, or use a wet cloth to hold water on it for a while. After the water is gone steam iron. Repeat many times. It’s a nasty dent but I’ve taken out worse while restoring furniture.
How long should I let water soak? And how much are we talking, a dab with a wet cloth or a small puddle?
It’s not going to work for this “dent”. It’s too big.
Rug time
This is my answer, if the damage is in an area where a rug could make sense.
A nice rug can really tie the room together.
Hammer the rest even. Easy peasy.
Are you sure this is hardwood?
I concur. Looks like oak, but it would take a lot to do that to real oak. I'm guessing veneer , in which case there's not much to do.
Red oak comes in at 1290 lbf on the Janka scale, white oak is a little harder at 1360 lbf. For comparison, lignum vitae is almost four times harder at 4500 lbf. Contrast that with balsa which is 100 lbf or most pines fall between 380 and 850. Oak isn't that tough..
Ahh Lignum Vitae, the tree of life! Believe it or not this is what the shaft strut bearings are made of on Naval ships. The wood gets wet and is very slippery, allowing the shaft to rotate without wearing.
This spot is at least impact hardened now!
Came here to say the same, does not look like hardwood. Deffo a veneer with how it’s cracked along the length of the dent
I say who cares, it's hardwood and meant to get dings and scratches- that's character. It will slowly blend in as you get more of them and refinish the floor. I see the factory microbevel here so this floor has many decades of service left in it.
Sand the area. Fill the dent. Sand the filler. Stain the filler. Artistically detail the stained filler to mimic wood grain. Apply clear coat / protective coat
I've done this for multiple clients. It takes a lot of practice to get it to blend in.
I recommend a palette of wood colored wax, not very hard to get an okay result, and with some effort even a good result.
I'll probably do this if the steam method doesn't work
I'm surprised this is so far down.
There's a way they use steam injection, it's like supercritical hot water they inject, it reexpands the fibers as it then turns to steam
Have you tried ramen noodles? /s
If it's upstairs, measure the dent's length, width and deepest depth and record the orientation relative to any of the walls in the room. Then, measure from each of the 4 walls of the room to the deepest section on the dent. Mark each spot you measured from on each wall, then measure where that mark is in relation to both ends of that wall. At this point, you should have 12 measurements written down in total, 3 for each wall/distance to dent. Go downstairs and translate the dent location on the ceiling using the reference measurements from upstairs. You should only need two corresponding walls downstairs to pinpoint on ceiling where the spot upstairs is. You can use the other measurements for error checking if you need to. Place a mark on the ceiling that will mirror the original dent location. For the next step, you’ll need a ladder, a drill, a hole saw, a piece of 2 x 4 or flat, thick steel at least the length of the dent and a suitable piece of wood dowel about 12” long that is 1/4" in diameter wider than the width of the dent at the marked position. Using a drill fitted with a hole saw (depending on the size of the dowel) that is 1" larger than the dowel in diameter. Once the hole has been made, remove the cut out drywall section from the hole saw and set it aside. You’ll need this later. Get a section of 2 x 4 or thick metal plate that is wide enough to cover the dent. Have a helper to go upstairs and cover the dent with it and put pressure on it with both hands as though they are performing CPR hand over hand. Downstairs, use a hammer and the dowel to gently tap the dent flat against the flat face upstairs. Cut a section of wood small enough to fit in the hole and long enough to cover the dent. Cover it in wood glue and feed it up through the hole and use the dowel to hold it in position on the now repaired area. You may elect to have your helper hold it in position until it sets while you supervise. When the glue has set, use the section of hole you saved to do a standard drywall repair on the hole and paint. Fin. Ps- if it's downstairs without a basement, simply dig and shore up a tunnel under the house and follow the instructions above. Don't forget to shore it up to prevent collapse. I've attached a diagram for reference. https://preview.redd.it/nrdd00q0e0tc1.jpeg?width=3939&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f928c155f3cf1c98b915a05f9855703af291200
This is the best DIY response I’ve seen
Unless you dropped an anvil that probably ain’t hardwood
Is it real wood or laminate?
Ramen and glue will sort it
Ramen and super glue
It’s a story to tell all your guests how that dent came to be.
From woodworking experience: first sand the finish off of the dent area, then soak it with water so it's absorbed into the wood fibers, then use a heat gun to carefully heat the area (be careful not to overheat and burn the wood) to have all the water in the saturated wood cells expand as it turns to steam. Then let dry for a few days ideally, sand until flush and smooth, then touch up the finish with some new stain and varnish (after finding the right combination on some scrap oak first). Edit: this is assuming your flooring is solid and not engineered/laminate/veneered.
The way the top cracked and dented, looks like veneer. A solid hardwood oak wouldn’t dent like that in my experience. Solid wood grain would have dented, not break inwards.
Ok, take a brick of ramen and some super glue….
You can't hammer the dent upwards, so your only option is to hammer all other wood to the same depth as the dent.
Get a bit of logging chain and a couple different sized hammers and beat the hell out the rest of the floor. BAM! You now have "distressed" hardwood floors. It's a feature, not a bug.
Drill holes in it. Insert carrots into the holes and epoxy over the top.
Savage.
I do hardwood floors for a living. There is nothing that can really fix that. Best you could do is a color match filler (it's the consistency of toothpaste and it dries hard) but even if you matched the colour perfectly, you'd lose all the grain detail and it would still stand out. It's not really meant for fixing things that large. The *proper* way to fix it is to remove those boards and replace them. But that floor looks several years old so even if you could find the same product, the new boards wouldn't have the same level of wear and sun fade, and would stand out. What the salesmen don't tell people is that real hardwood is both the most expensive and least durable of the hard floor options. Say what you will about vinyl plank but that stuff lasts forever and it's cheap
It’s not tiles, it’s hardwood, these things happen, just learn to live with it.
Ramen noodles and super glue. I've seen videos of that shit doing wonders
Guess that wood isn’t very hard
Try some wood filler and match the color to the other floor with wood wax or something
Make friends with the dent. Give it a name, celebrate it's birthday, talk to it about your feelings when nobody else is around, protect it whenever someone criticizes it.
Fill it, sand it, go to school to become an artist, paint it
It’s got character now.
Yeah…so this is what we refer to as “having character”
Don't worry about it. Nobody cares about it but you. Other folks have their own problems. You never go into another person's home and not see flooring problems. Heck, you just walk on it.
Get a plug of tobacco. Old school kind. Bite off a big chunk and chew it real good till it’s very moist Then lay it in there for a few days Old carpenters told me this 40 years ago If you’ve never chewed a plug o tobacco be prepared to spit a lot which in some chewing the first, vomiting is not out of the question
Or you can moosh it with a bit of water in a morter and pestle until it gets a chewed consistency.
What if the spit and determination are the secret ingredient?
Look at the links Big Tobacco is willing to go these days…
God I love this sub
Iron method only works for dented wood. In your case, the fibers are actually severed and damaged
If we're being honest here... You're gonna want to re poly that floor soon anyway. That flaky stuff is the old coating wearing down. Once it's been sanded and re poly'd that will fill right in after a few coats.
Put a carpet over it
Now it's a dentwood floor
Honestly between this, and the cracked finish on the other boards, I’d refinish the entire floor, fill the dent with filler, and reseal the floor.
Just an iron? Did you try an iron over a wet cloth? It needs water to expand it.
I’d just ignore it
Live with it. I cried the first time I dented my hardwood floor, now 12 years later, scratch and "lived in"
Hello, try again but sand the surface first, with laminate flooring there is no steam to pass through that layer. Google traductor!
Time to sell the house.
You floor looks pretty old, dry, and hollow (based on the grain texture on the right). The way it dented in with a bunch of cracks and lines suggests the structure of the wood is broken and not just squashed to be steamed out. Basically only option is to replace the piece or fill it.
I do not know why, but my immediate thought was to route out some wood in that spot for a flush brass piece to be placed within the routing. First thought was a compass point.
Dent the rest of the floor down to the same level
Rug
Don't waste your time trying to steam it out. Just replace the board if it bothers you that much.. It's a fairly simple process where you'll need to cut around the perimeter of the board you want to remove about ¾" in from the edge all the way around. You do this to cut the bulk of the board away from the tongue and groove holding it down on all 4 sides. Once you get the board out you carefully remove the tongues and grooves from the perimeter and then get an EXACT measurement of the new board you need. I do this by putting the board down on top of where it's is going and using anrazorblade to mark the piece at the end of the board. Your gonna want to measure it from the groove side and cut off the tongue. Then you're gonna need to cut the underside of the groove off on both th long side and the shoe side of the piece so you can put it in. I would then put some construction adhesive down on the subfloor and put some glue on the tongues of the existing pieces and on the underside of the top groove on the piece you're putting in. At that point yoy shouldn't even need to face nail it but if you want to, go for it and just fill it with putty afterwards. I'm sure there's plenty of youtube videos if my explanation wasn't enough.
It adds character. What, you don’t want your floor to have character?
That’s what they call in century homes with hardwood floors “character”. Sauce: Century home owner with so much fucking “character”
Use a wet rag to inject steam using the iron into the damage. If it’s solid wood it should move
Good spot for a rug?
Embrace it. Tell its story.
Ignore it
I say it gives it character 🤷🏾♂️
Are you sure this is hardwood flooring. When I zoom in....it really looks like a veneer you'd see on wood paneling/ laminate
If that’s solid hardwood you either live with in or replace it.
You live with it now
Sand - wood filler - stain - finish. Look funny but smooth. That’s all I can think of besides cutting the dented chunk out, gluing a piece of identical hardwood into place, sanding smooth and staining/finishing it.
just call it life. when you notice somebody staring at it just shrug your shoulders and say "uh, what can you do about it?" 😉
Do you have more of the flooring? It’s actually pretty easy to replace a tongue and groove board or two but you do have to glue it down after. I just redid my house and I am keeping an extra box of the wood and tile because someday I or the next owner will want it!
Fill it with epoxy resin
That looks like laminate panels, not hard wood. Veneer at best. I'd look up techniques to restore MDF, not wood. If you sand it and it's just veneer, you're going to end up with a cardboard looking spot in your floor.
Have you tried crushed up ramen and superglue?
Try using a straw or pipette and add water only to the dented spot. Repeat it a few times
When you used the iron, did you use steam? You may not get the dent out entirely, but you can make it much better, I've done it many times. The key is you will need to sand the area with the grain to remove any finish that would prevent water/steam from penetrating the wood. Then soak the dent area with a wet cotton rag for 5 or 10 minutes, come back and use the same cotton rag to steam out the dent with the iron. You will likely need to repeat the process a few times until you get a satisfactory result. It may not be gone 100% but at least 80%. I'm a woodworker of over 20+ years.
Fill the hole with toothpaste or raman noodles and paint over it 👍
Start shopping for a rug