That Time with the Wobbly Floor

Okay, so I gotta share this story about my floor fiasco. Moved into this older place a while back, nice character, but the living room floor… oh boy. It was this old parquet wooden thing, looked decent enough, but walk across it? It bounced. Seriously, like a very stiff, very loud trampoline. My kids thought it was hilarious, called it the “dancing floor”. Me? Not so much. Every step was a squeak and a dip.

I kept thinking, there’s gotta be a cheap fix, right? I’m not exactly rolling in cash to rip it all out. So, my brain goes into its weird DIY mode. I’m looking at the gaps, the way the wood pieces moved, and I thought, “What if I put something kinda… rubbery… underneath? Like shock absorbers?” Yeah, I know. Sounds daft now.

The Grand Rubber Plan

My big idea involved getting some dense rubber sheeting. Not sure where that idea came from, maybe saw something similar somewhere, who knows. I pictured myself carefully cutting strips and wedging them under the loosest parquet blocks. Thought it would cushion the movement, stop the bounce, kill the squeaks. Genius, right? Wrong.

First, getting the rubber was a thing. Found some thick matting stuff at a hardware store reject pile. Cheap! Perfect for my experiment. Got it home, grabbed my utility knife, pry bar, and knee pads. Felt like I was prepping for surgery.

Getting Stuck In (Literally)

So, I started in the bounciest corner. Getting those first few parquet blocks up without wrecking them? Way harder than YouTube makes it look. Managed to pry a couple loose. Okay, progress. Then I tried cutting the rubber mat into little squares and strips. That stuff was tougher than it looked. My hands were killing me.

Then came the real fun part: trying to slide these rubber bits under the surrounding blocks without pulling them up too. It was like playing Operation, but with more swearing. Here’s kinda how it went:

• Pry up one block (carefully!).
• Try to jam a piece of rubber underneath the edge of the next block.
• Watch as the block I didn’t want to move suddenly popped up halfway across the room.
• Try to hammer that block back down, only to make the bounce even worse.
• Realize the rubber was too thick anyway and just lifted the blocks higher.

I spent a whole afternoon on maybe a two-foot square area. It looked worse than when I started. The floor wasn’t just dancing anymore; it was doing the cha-cha with random rubber bits sticking out. Total disaster.

What Actually Happened

Yeah, the rubber idea was a complete bust. Didn’t absorb anything, just made the floor uneven and frankly, dangerous. Looked like my floor had developed some weird lumpy disease. I ended up pulling out the rubber pieces I’d managed to wedge in, which took almost as long as putting them there.

Had to admit defeat. The floor kept dancing. The squeaks kept squeaking. My brilliant rubber solution? Just a story about a wasted Saturday and sore hands. Eventually, I saved up a bit and got a guy to come look. He just laughed when I told him about the rubber. Turns out the whole subfloor underneath was shot. Needed proper fixing, no amount of rubber was gonna help that.

So, that’s my tale of the rubber dancing parquet wooden flooring attempt. Sometimes, DIY genius is just… not. Learned my lesson though: some jobs really are best left to people who know what they’re doing. And maybe don’t try to fix structural problems with rubber mats.