If you've got a floating floor of any sort, whether that's laminate, LVP,
or some other material, anything with those interlocking planks,
I'm gonna show you some ways that you can take care of these unsightly gaps that
arise, especially in the winter when things contract.
So I'm gonna show you two methods. The first one is really cheap.
Will cost you just a few bucks. And the second one is most likely free for you,
using stuff that you already have from around the house.
The first one we're gonna look at is one of these end to end gaps.
So I've got a gap here that's just been growing little by little as the
weather's gotten colder, and this is a pretty easy one to fix.
So the first method I'll show you,
you just need a 2x4 and I've cut this one to maybe about 20 inches.
And I've also run some 220 grit sandpaper over one side. I want a nice,
smooth surface that I can adhere to. You're also gonna need a hammer for this.
And then the only other thing you need is some double-sided tape.
Now I pick this stuff up on Amazon. This is really well reviewed,
and this is called Easy Life Go.
And it costs at least at the time that I bought it about $11 for this roll.
So not too bad.
And all we need to do is we're basically gonna adhere this to one of the planks.
Now, also be sure to look around at your planks to see which ones need to move.
It might make more sense to move it in one direction than the other.
Like in my case, I have a banister right here. And so I don't want to,
there's really no room for me to move it this way going in this direction,
I really have to move this one over towards this one,
so I'm gonna basically be placing this over on this side and moving it over.
So we're gonna peel off some of this tape.
I actually never used this stuff before.
I'm used to the traditional double sided tape,
but this one had such good reviews I thought we had to give it a try.
I'm gonna use two pieces for this board.
And.
Need to peel up. Okay. There's one.
All right, there's our second one. We're gonna put our smooth side down.
I almost forgot.
We do need to vacuum out this gap to make sure there's no debris stuck in there.
So I've got my vacuum cleaner here.
All.
Right. That looks good and clean.
So now we're gonna use the smooth side of our board here, and I've got a carpet,
a rug here.
I'm gonna give myself a little more room so that I can put it right there
and then put some good weight on there to get some good adhesion.
Okay. That's good. And basically,
that's all we're gonna need to do to get started, to move this thing over.
Now with that in place,
I'm just gonna use the hammer to knock this over and keep an eye on this gap.
Watch this will close right up.
There we go. Nice and tight.
Now you don't want to overdo it cuz you could create a little peak and we don't
want that. So right there is nice and tight. I can leave that be.
Now that's that gap, but that's gonna create of course,
a gap on the end of this plank right here.
So I need to go to the next one and do the same thing and just keep moving these
over. Now, this double-sided tape usually sticks really well.
So it's helpful to have a chisel or you can also use a putty spatula,
but something with a little more strength to it is good. There we go. Okay.
That actually came up pretty easy.
And I'm gonna actually see if I can re use these pieces further on down the
line. So here's the new gap that's created.
Let me see if I can get these ones up and reuse them.
Excellent. Okay. Again,
smooth side of our board down.
Put some good weight on there.
Let's see if we can close up that gap.
All right, that should do it. Here we go.
Look at that closed right up.
And now here at the end of the row, I actually just cut one of these strips.
I'm just, I've just cut these shorter strips so that I can put 'em here
And then I'll put another one next to it.
These are actually quite dirty already. So we'll see if this works,
but this idea here is because we need a little room.
I'm gonna push it down pretty hard there again,
kind of kneel on it and then use the side of the hammer to try to hit away from
the wall. Look at that,
piece of cake. Again,
I'm still using these same pieces of tape that I used all the way along.
Pretty cool. It's the next day now.
And last night I wanted to try out something that the double-sided tape
manufacturer here says you can do.
They say you can actually just rinse this off in the sink,
get all the debris off and then let it air dry. So I did that,
let it sit on the counter overnight.
And this morning I came back and they looked like this.
They were clean and very sticky again, just like they said they would be,
which is pretty cool.
So this one's a little dirtier because I actually used this this morning to fix
another gap in the floor. So it works as advertised.
So definitely pretty cool and something that most double-sided tape cannot do.
For our second method,
this is the one using mostly stuff you probably have around the house.
We're gonna use the same 2x4,
which again is sanded down to about a 220 grit to give a nice, smooth surface.
We're gonna use a roll of painters tape, a bit of super glue,
and it's important that this stuff is the liquid kind.
We don't want gel or anything like that, but any cheap super glue will work,
I've got a bottle of this or a little, uh,
little bit of this and then some lock tight as well.
Either one will work just great.
I've got a sponge that's moisturized on one side and then a little spray bottle
of water. And then we've got our hammer and chisel just like before.
So we're gonna actually apply some tape to
about this much. And again,
I'm doing a shorter version cuz I need it to sit right here.
I'm gonna try to knock this piece and fill this gap,
which I've already vacuumed. I'm gonna try to knock this into the other one.
So I'm gonna tape this up.
I'm gonna overlap each piece just to make sure we don't get any glue seeping
through. Not that important on the 2x4, but definitely important on the floor.
So there's that one. And I left a little gap right there.
I'm gonna cover that up just in case. I'll just go all the way through.
Right there is great. All right.
Now I'm gonna push these down really well,
make sure that there's no gaps.
We don't want any super glue getting through to the floor, especially.
All right. Um,
I'm actually gonna now tear this back cause I don't want to fill in that gap
with painters tape it all. Here we go.
Okay, next I'm just gonna put some of this super glue on one side. Here we go.
Apply it fairly liberally here. Nice little zigzag.
And then on this side you've got two options.
You can wet it with a and get a kind of moist there.
And what the water does is it acts as an activator to the super glue to help it
dry or cure even faster. And I actually like a little more water than that.
That's why I've got the spray bottle here. There we go.
Get it good and wet and then apply this right here.
Gonna kneel down on this to let it form a good bond with my weight on it.
And I'll sit here for, you know, 10 seconds at least, uh,
maybe 20 or 30 just to be safe.
So I'm gonna keep one knee with weight down on this side.
And just like before we're gonna kind of use the side of the hammer.
Since we have limited room, keep an eye on this gap here and watch it close up.
There we go. A few hits and that is good to go.
So just like before we'll use the chisel to gently pry this off and another cool
thing with this blue and glue, this technique, by the way,
my friend Robert from Rask Guitars showed me this.
He makes guitars every day and uses this technique quite a bit.
And some times There you go,
you can actually get the,
the glue will hold the tape together and then you can reuse this piece.
So I can put this tape back down and move the board somewhere else to fix
another gap if I need to.
So that's the second technique and hopefully will cost you little to no money to
do. So hopefully you found that advice helpful and can fix the gaps in your
flooring. Now,
if you wanna learn more about some of the cool stuff that painters tape can do,
you can check out this video right here. Thanks for watching.