STRAND PROFILE
Flooring
Squeaks, lifted boards, thresholds and the noises a floor makes.
Running order
Floors talk. A squeak is a moving part rubbing against a fixed one, and the whole of this strand is about working out which two parts those are before reaching for a screw.
Most of the time the answer is a board that has worked loose from the joist beneath it, and the fix is one screw in the right place. Sometimes it is a board rubbing its neighbour along the tongue, and a screw makes it worse. Telling those two cases apart is half of the work and all of the skill.
The guides in this strand keep a firm line about what sits underneath a floor. Pipes and cables run between joists as a matter of course, and nothing in these pages asks you to drive a fixing anywhere you have not first established what is behind it.
Open the weekend schedule to see how a strand of this kind is paced across two days, or the room directory to find the same guides by room.