Baby Powdered Floors

Warning: This post is going to be different, perhaps even scary. If the slightest creak of your floors makes your eyes widen and your head snap around, you may be uncomfortable reading this. Because this post is all about…creaky floors. Yup, we are talking floors today. As I like to do around here is to show you the good, bad, and the ugly. The project is a mix of all of those. So let’s learn more about this creaky floor project, eh?

It all started when I was reading HGTV Magazine and a tip flew out of the pages and smacked me in the face. It said that if you sprinkled baby powder on the floors and then softly “beat” it into the cracks (all Michael Jackson style, son!), it would fill in and “lubricate the joints”. Man, you have never seen me run to the baby section of the store so quickly (since we don’t have a baby). I got a mini-baby powder bottle because, let’s face it, a little baby powder goes a long way. I was so excited to see this tip since we have two sections in our hallway that are very creaky. I always feel like I wake up the whole house when I get up before everyone else (everyone else meaning Eric and company when we have it). So an easy way to fix it just seemed too good to be true. And perhaps it was…(spoiler alert).

After I bought the baby powder, I had gathered a random piece of wood we had around the house and a towel to wrap around it so I didn’t damage the floors whilst pounding them. Then I liberally sprinkled the baby powder on the problem areas.

I rubbed the powder into the floor little bit, working it into some of the cracks.

Then came the fun part: beating the floor. Until my first pound enshrouded me in a baby powder shower of dust. Maybe I was a little too forceful. I then resulted to sharp but short pounds on the floor, working my way from one side of the area to the other.

This requires another warning: this project is messy! This stuff flies around everywhere! I saw baby powder residue for days afterward. Although it does force you to really get down on yours hands and knees and clean the floor.

So that was the process that I did for both sections of our hardwood floors that like to creak and moan. After I had poured, pounded, and cleaned up, I eagerly began to hop about on the floors, waiting to hear nothing. And what did I hear? Some creaks! Grrr… So I decided to repeat, except even more thoroughly. And the result then? Dampened squeaks.

What would I say as the final word and advice on this project? It’s messy, and not fool proof, but it did seem to help the floors. It did not completely cure the creaks on our two problem areas, but it did seem to dampen the creaks. When I really got down to it, I could tell where the boards were the creakiest and no amount of baby powder seemed to fix that. However, the smaller creaks did seem to go away with the baby powder remedy.

So this project wasn’t a total win and it wasn’t a total loss. It seemed to help some of the creaks, but not all of the creaks. Would I recommend it? Yes, to those little problem areas, but if your boards have really big creaks (perhaps because of warping like our seemed to have done a little bit) I don’t think any amount of baby powder will fix them. So there it is, my scary post of creaky floors and baby powder. Run for your lives!