Q: A metal picture frame sitting on a bookcase fell about three feet and caused a small puncture wound in my parquet floor. The floor was installed in the 1960s and was refinished and stained seven years ago. I have some of the stain left over. How do I fix this hole?
Alexandria
A: Sometimes damage to a floor is a bit like a bruise: The wood fibers get crushed, but they are still intact. In other cases, the damage is more brutal: The fibers rip, creating the type of “puncture wound” damage that’s visible in the picture you sent. It’s usually possible to repair both types of damage, but the methods differ.
When there is just a dent, with no frayed bits of wood fiber showing, it’s often possible to plump up the fibers so they spring back to their original position, erasing the dent. The tool for this: an iron. Dampen a corner of a cloth (not the whole thing because you don’t want to drip all over the wood). Position the damp area over the dent and use the tip of the iron over the cloth to send a little burst of steam into the wood. You might need to do this a few times. The dent might not completely disappear, but it generally will become far less noticeable.
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When a wood floor gets gouged enough to break the wood fibers, though, this approach won’t work. You need to fill the wound with wood filler, but which kind? You’ll find a confusing array staring at you at a paint store or in the paint section of a hardware store or home center.
Some fillers, such as DAP’s plastic wood fillers , are usually used to fill holes on projects before a final finish goes on. Patches dry hard, which means you can sand them level with the surrounding wood, apply stain (if needed) and then coat the whole surface with finish for an unblemished look. The main advantage of the solvent fillers is that they dry faster, meaning the sanding step can begin sooner. But if you are mending a wood floor that has already been stained and finished, be aware that the color won’t necessarily come out the same, whether you buy filler that has color already mixed in or buy neutral-color filler and tint it yourself with your leftover stain. Plus, you don’t really want to sand the filler level with the floor; that would just create a bigger area that you need to repair.
A different category of fillers is designed for use on projects that already have finish. Sold in jars or tins as putty or in crayonlike sticks or fat-lead pencils, these fillers never really dry. They have a waxy consistency, so you can push the material into a hole and rub off the excess with a soft cloth. Examples include DAP Plastic Wood Putty and DAP Blend Stick packs. These products usually won’t accept stain, but you can blend the pre-mixed colors to create a custom shade. There’s a bit of a shine on the filler, so you don’t need to add finish (and it probably wouldn’t stick, anyway). The putty or repair sticks are a better way to go on a floor, mostly because it’s easier to repair the one spot you’re targeting without damaging the surrounding wood and its finish.
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But the larger the patch, the more noticeable it will be if you simply fill the hole with a colored patch material, even if you really work at blending colors to get as close a color match as possible. That’s because a single color can’t match the color variations in natural wood, thanks to the annual growth rings and other features that grew into the wood when the tree was alive. Oak, which is almost certainly the type of wood in your parquet floor, has alternating bands of light- and dark-colored wood, plus very thin, dark brown streaks running vertically in each board. These streaks are called rays.
Re-creating these color variations in a patch goes a long way toward making it invisible. Marker pens work great for this. Try a repair kit that includes a few blending sticks plus a few markers, which are also useful for touching up scratches. DAP’s Wood Finish Repair Kit is $9.99 at Ace hardware stores. To add fine details, such as the rays in oak, get a brown permanent marker with an ultrafine tip.
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