fixing squeaks in hardwood floor
 

Hi all.

I'm covering a large section of old hardwood flooring in my 1960s house with carpet soon (kids and dogs need something softer to run around on). Beforehand though, I really want to take care of some of the nasty squeaks in the floor. Naturally, they're prominant in the areas that are walked on most, near doorways and at the foot of the stairs. Very annoying.

I know if I run a bunch of screws into the joists that will probably stop much of it, but the last thing I want to do is destroy the floor...so...

Can I do anything from the basement? I've heard stories of baby powder helping...but can that really be a permanent fix??

Suggestions on how to get rid of these squeaks will really help guys! Thanks.

If you have access to he floor from underneath, you can run screws in at angles (toenail them). You can also try driving shims in to tighten the flooring and stop the movement.

That's what I figured. Should the screws be toenailed through a joist and up into the plank flooring? Not sure what kind of subfloor is under the wood but do the screws need to dig into that also?

Thanks.

most of the time, it wont need to dig into the wood floor itself, the squeaking comes from the sub-floor on the joists, once you firmly connect those two, 90%-100% of the noise should be gone.

you SHOULD almost never need to hit the floor, only the subfloor.