Hardwood Floor Repair Job, NEED HELP

I broke the cardinal rule and put ash in a plastic bucket. Thought it was all out. IT wasn't. Burnt a hole in my hardwood, three pieces are affected. Chiseled out some of the burn and marked a cutting point.

My question is this, can I cut the old boards out just anywhere, it do I have to remove the whole board? All DIY videos I've seen show people remove the whole board, (cutting to the joints then removing the board. If I can just cut around the circle, then replace with three pieces of new, custom cut wood it would be a lot easier than removing each individual board, as there are at least 5 involved due to the burn being on a joint, and one of them going under the moulding on the wall.

I hope this question isn't too confusing. Perhaps the picture will help explain better than my frazzled words at this point. (very frustrated, already have to go tool shopping, never done this before, and feel stupid for burning a hole in my floor)

Any and all advice will be helpful. Thanks again.

 

Welcome to the forums!

We've all done stupid stuff before, that's part of life and hopefully learning

If you don't remove an entire board you'll have a difficult time getting a tight fit as you loose all of the tongue and groove. Also you don't want to just cut off 3 boards at the same place - that makes the repair more noticeable. It's best to remove full boards and then insert the new with the bottom have of the groove on the end, cut off.

 

Attached are some photos of what I've done to lace in new boards as I had a few holes a little smaller than that and one much bigger in one area. The key, like marksr said, is to remove full boards and cut the bottom half of the groove off. Depending on how much you actually remove you should only have to cut one or two grooves off the pieces opposite the direction you start at.


Obviously you'll want to start with the new wood tongue going into the old groove, then new tongue into new groove, and finally new tongue into new groove with the groove cut on the bottom so you can drop it in, and work that way. Probably doesn't make any sense reading that. Always stagger so you don't end up with joints all in a row (no more than two if you can), I'm not sure how the floor was laid previously so that could add or subtract challenges... Will you have to nail? Think of it as a puzzle, you might have to cut certain grooves or tongues depending on how you stagger and how well you remove the boards.


My favorite tool for this type of job (and I've done 4 laces now at my new house) is an oscillating multi-tool. This will let you cut, with precision, into places that aren't joints if need be, it will let you cut along the inside of a board so you avoid cutting the tongue off of boards and will cut the grooves off the bottom of the boards. Looks like you have pretty nice floors to begin with so if you're uncomfortable and uncertain of your results hire someone. Good luck.