This client found a 9x8 section of flooring missing in the center of his oak floor. The original flooring is beveled, so it wasn't going to be a piece of cake to find flooring to match. So I installed a mitered border around a 45 degree angled field. This was the first floor where I had to install the border first. Usually I install the field first.

Hole:


Install:


Finished:

It works! A picture worth a thousand words.

very nice problem solving

That looks real good and alot better than the exsting wood.

Looks good!!


I cringe seeing those gaps in the existing, during the dry heating season, and a tight new installation right next to it. There is a reason the old existing is gapped.

Perry,

I'm pretty sure the older, existing floor is a prefinished, bevel-edged strip. Seen tons of it. In fact, the HD near me still sells a boatload of it. So those "gaps" you are seeing are really v-grooves. While the poster did a nice job, personally, I didn't think the existing floor was that great and would have "encouraged" the owners to replace the entire room. IMHO.

I missed the beveled part, in the original post.

The reason I posted that, was because I had an inspection, where the home was added on to and the new bedroom and some existing wood(replaced) that was now the hallway, was new. The new section was compression cupped. The old existing was evenly gapped(slightly)

I saw the pictures above and jumped to conclusions.

The existing floor was of the beveled variety, but those "gaps" you see in the photo are only 70% bevel. There is some actual gapping occurring, which I attribute to poor installation.

When I harvested some material from the closet to repair holes in the living room, I found out that the flooring was installed with only two or three 8 penny casing nails per board. The temeperate Wisconsin climate and time (35 years) was all that was needed to gap up this floor. And those bevels only make it stand out even more.

The main reason the entire room wasn't replaced was because there is about 600 square feet of that stuff throughout the house and the client wanted the room in the photograph tied in with the rest of the house somehow.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.