Dealing with that Bouncy Parquet

Alright, so I had this patch of parquet timber flooring in the old house. Looked nice enough, you know, that classic pattern. But walking on it? Man, it was something else. It wasn’t just creaky, it felt… springy. Like it was made of rubber sometimes, especially in one corner. Drove me nuts. You’d step there, and it felt like the floor gave way a little, then bounced back. My kid even started calling it the ‘dancing floor’.

So, first thing, I got down on my hands and knees, poked around a bit. Thought maybe some blocks were just loose. I tapped them, pushed them. Some were a bit wiggly, yeah, but it felt like the whole section had this weird give to it. Not just individual pieces. It was like the whole thing was floating on jelly. Well, not really jelly, but you get the idea. This wasn’t a simple ‘nail it down’ job, I figured.

I messed around trying to fix the obvious bits first. Got my hammer and some thin nails, tried to tack down the edges of the bouncy area. Waste of time. It barely made a difference. The wood just seemed to absorb the nail and kept doing its little dance whenever I stepped near it. It was like the parquet itself had decided it wanted to be a trampoline.

Thinking Outside the Box (Maybe Too Far?)

I started thinking maybe the stuff underneath, the subfloor or whatever glue they used back then, had gone bad. Maybe it had crumbled, leaving gaps. Or maybe it got damp and turned spongy? Who knows. I wasn’t about to rip the whole thing up, that’s a massive job. Too much dust, too much hassle.

Then I had this slightly weird idea. What if I could inject something underneath? Something that would fill the gap but still have a bit of flex, so it wouldn’t crack? My mind went to rubber. Like some kind of liquid rubber or heavy-duty sealant. Seemed plausible, right? Fill the void, stop the bounce.

So I got myself one of those caulking guns and a few tubes of this thick, black, rubbery sealant stuff. Stuff you might use for roofing or something. Probably overkill, but I thought ‘go big or go home’. I drilled a few tiny holes, barely visible, between the wood blocks in the bounciest area. Then I started pumping that black goo in there.

• Getting the nozzle in the small holes was fiddly.
• Judging how much to pump in was pure guesswork.
• Wiping up the excess before it stuck everywhere was messy.

It felt weird, feeding this rubbery stuff under the ‘dancing’ wood. Took a couple of tubes before I felt like maybe, just maybe, the space was getting filled. I tried to spread the injection points around.

The Aftermath

I let it sit for a day or two, like the tube said. Cleaned up the mess best I could. Then came the moment of truth. I went over and carefully stepped on the spot.

And… well, it was different. Not exactly fixed, maybe? The big bounce was gone, which was good. But it wasn’t solid like the rest of the floor either. It now had this dull, sort of deadened feel. Like stepping on firm rubber. The ‘dancing’ was gone, replaced by a sort of ‘thud’. It was definitely less annoying, I’ll give it that. But walking across that section, you could still feel the transition. Solid wood, then this weirdly firm rubbery patch, then back to solid wood.

So, was it a success? Eh, kinda. It stopped the floor from feeling like it was about to collapse. It stopped the annoying bounce. But did it make it feel like a normal parquet floor? Nope. It’s just… different now. Less ‘rubber dancing’, more ‘solid rubber’. It’s stable, I guess. But man, what a strange fix. Sometimes these old houses just throw weird problems at you, and you end up with weird solutions. At least the kid stopped jumping on it. Small wins, right?