Floorboards

[gingerhousecat]

Looking for a bit of advice - wanting to restore our floorboards in one room. They are tounge and groove but in some places they just have a gap...I presume where they have been lifted at some point? If I'm going to attempt sanding down myself what do I do about these bits? ( attached a pic!) I wouldn't fill in the gaps with rest of floor as I like the look with the tounge and groove but worried the random bits will make it drafty and let lots of creepy crawlies in! I was planning on using osmo but was told that's not great for floorboards? Finally, am I better off getting someone to do it for me? My budgets limited!

We got a quote from someone to do ours and it was £1500. We did it ourselves for £500.

We did use osmo. We moved a year after we did it, but they had been fabulous up until then. Lots of puppy accidents not them etc. We didn't fill our living room gaps and I found it fine to be honest, not a problem. We thought it would help the house continue to breathe a bit as it had had damp when we got it. Upstairs we used insulation black tape between the boards. When you were up close it looked a bit odd but after being down a couple of weeks it looked pretty decent in there too.

Its a hard job, we spent 3-4 days doing the living room, hallway and landing. The drum sander is very loud, and we hired a handheld one to do the corners of the rooms too. You have to knock all the nails down into the wood 1-2mm before you start too else they rip the sand paper on the drum. Then wipe it all with methylated spirit, then you can oil it. I'll see if I can find any photos of ours.

I've done most of mine myself in two houses. I prefer to hire just an edging sander as the large one is very heavy. It's easy to do a room in a day, though quite back breaking with the edger as you're bent over and the edger with sandpaper probably costs around £60-70. I wait for the dust to settle, then wash ( I use hot very slightly soapy water) Once the floor is dry I use 3 coats of Ronseal floor wax which I prefer to varnish
It's a nasty, filthy horrible job IMO but well worth the savings in money. I usually don't worry about gaps but have in the past used this sort of plastic V shaped stuff that you put down the gaps. Worked well but kept popping up so I removed it

This was our landing...very similar to what yours looked like underneath the carpet.

Thanks. I love your floors Florence, that's the colour I'm after- was it Amber Osmo?
Notarehearsal- that's a good price! I have a little cheap electric sander and tried doing a bit just to see how difficult it would be. I was going to hire the sander and use that for the edges. Is that stuff called stop gap?
I have two little kids so I just thought if it wasn't two pricey it might be easier rather than me bodging it

This was just the clear actually. You can use tester pots to see which colour they'll look once stained. If you dab sanded Ines with water thats similar to what clear will look like.

This was the type of tape, loads of variations about:

http://www.screwfix.com/p/stormguard-extra-thick-weatherstrip-black-7m/40425?tc=EB3&dsrl=1245250&gclid=CjwKCAjwllPNBRBcEiwA4pplReRuObCiy4gE6Er4n3gRGK8nayzLrlfMBI3vEZ-o4a3QoV1KZQSLRoCANIQAvDDBwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CIv-74zbqtYCFQmpUQodTW0GFA