How to Replace a Cracked Wood Plank on a Floating Floor

Floating floors are laid without nails or adhesive, making them easy to install. The boards are simply snapped together, course by course, across the whole span of the floor. If one of those boards later becomes cracked, the repair process is also pretty easy. Since the boards aren’t nailed or glued down, you simply have to disassemble the floor from one side, working your way to the broken plank.

Pry bar
Hammer
Replacement floating floor boards
Finishing nailer

Instructions

- 1
  Pull the floor trim off the wall around the edges of the floor by tapping your pry bar between the trim and the wall with your hammer and then gently prying it out. Don’t break the trim. Set it aside. The removal of the trim should reveal a roughly half-inch space around the perimeter of the floor by the walls.
- 2
  Use your hands to push on the surface of the floating floorboards by the wall on the side of the floor that’s closest to the damaged planks. Push and wiggle the boards until they come loose from the adjacent boards of the second course and move into the half-inch space. Leave the loosened boards sitting in order on the floor.
- 3
  Push and wiggle the boards of the next course in the same manner, loosening them and then leaving them sitting loosely in the same order they were in.
- 4
  Repeat and continue, loosing the boards, course by course and working your way out across the floor, until you get to the damaged board.
- 5
  Take out the damaged board. Snap the new board in its place.
- 6
  Reassemble the floor course by course, working your way back toward the starting wall, putting each board back where it was.
- 7
  Put the floor trim back in place, using your finishing nailer and covering up the remaining space at the wall.

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