Chipped Nails: Silence a squeaky floorboard

In the picture, I am carefully pounding a nail into a split floorboard while Daddy supervises my work through reading glasses.

Thirty-eight years later, I still remember how excited I was as I used both hands to control the hammer while I tapped that nail into that little sliver of wood.

I thought of that project earlier this year, when one of the many creaky floorboards in our 90-year-old Craftsman bungalow developed a small split and began to feel unnervingly spongy.

I wasn't keen on taking a shortcut to the basement at some inopportune moment, so I decided it was time to shore up the floor.

If you have easy access to the underside of your floor -- as we do -- the simplest and least conspicuous way to silence a squeaky board is to reinforce it from below with plywood scraps and 2-by-4s.

Fashion description:A sheet of half-inch plywood, mounted from the bottom and reinforced with 2x4s screwed to the floor joists, will quiet squeaky floorboards.

I started by measuring the space between the floor joists.

Next, I cut sections of plywood about half an inch narrower than that space and as long as I felt like wrangling into place, keeping in mind that I'd be working above my head, in an awkward position.

I measured my floorboards, which are 3 inches wide, and drilled rows of holes 3 inches apart in the plywood.

When my plywood was ready, I cut sections of 2-by-4s roughly the same length as the plywood sections and drilled several holes through the middle of each one.

I found a rickety spot and laid one of the plywood pieces against it, lining it up so the holes were in the centers of the floorboards.

Small sections of half-inch plywood are mounted from the bottom and reinforced with 2x4s screwed to the floor joists to quiet squeaky floorboards. Here, a section of the cold-air return for the furnace had to be removed and replaced to access the part of the floor that had the squeak.Emily Priddy ~ photos@semissourian.com

Using a drill fitted with a screwdriver bit, I attached the plywood to the boards with 1-inch drywall screws.

Then, with the plywood securely installed, I laid a section of 2-by-4 against the joist on one side of the plywood, pressed it flush against the plywood, and attached it to the joist with a 2-inch, star-headed deck screw. (Star-headed screws are one of God's greatest gifts to DIYers, as the heads are less prone to strip out while you're trying to drive them into dense, dry floor joists.)

I repeated this process on the opposite joist, creating a sturdy reinforcement that kept the boards still.

For good measure, I went back upstairs and examined the formerly spongy spot. My repair had removed the risk of stepping through the floor, but my inner 4-year-old couldn't abide the thought of the split edge popping up and tripping someone, so I pried it up just enough to squeeze some wood glue down under it.

I pressed it back down, used a damp rag to wipe off the excess glue that oozed out and weighted the board down with a coffee-table book and a couple of cast-iron skillets to keep it firmly in place while it dried.

A section of the cold-air return for the furnace had to be removed and some wiring moved aside to access the part of the floor that had the squeak. Here, the work is complete, and the wiring and cold-air return have been replaced.Emily Priddy ~ photos@semissourian.com

The floor has developed a few more squeaks since I made that repair, but I'm ready for them: In keeping with our 38-year tradition of hardwood-floor maintenance, Daddy pulled some plywood scraps out of his barn and cut them into sections just the right size for fixing squeaks.

Every time I install one, I think of Daddy and smile, remembering that afternoon in 1979 he spent supervising me while I worked on my very first DIY project.