The Silent Treatment

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As flooring contractor Patrick Hunt treads across the parlor of the 1860s farmhouse that his parents are restoring, a chorus of loud chirps and squeaks rises up from the plain-sawn white oak strips beneath his feet. "Beautiful to look at," he says. "But what a racket."

In 17th-century Japan, the shoguns valued (and deliberately built) squeaky "nightingale floors" as early warning systems against palace intruders. But Hunt, who with his crew installed the oak and pine in TOH's project house in Billerica, is hardly concerned with thwarting assasins. He just wants to restore a measure of quiet and solidity to the house. "Eighty percent of the time you're hearing wood rubbing against a nail," Hunt says, shifing his weight and evincing a groan from one ornery board. "These floorboards swell and contract regularly with the changing seasons, so the nails, the boards, and even the subflooring loosen up, causing something to rub against something else."

Silencing squeaks is generally a simple matter. "In most cases, you can face-nail the boards back in place," he says. If that doesn't work, lubing them with powder, gluing them back in place, or shimming them tight may squelch the squawks. But a floor that's spongy or sagging could be a sign of serious damage or structural deficiencies, requiring him to shore up the joists or replace the flooring.

Thankfully, this is not a worry at his parents' place. After driving in a few nails, he takes a stroll to test for sounds. Hearing a few sighs, he smiles. "I'll leave those," he says. "Someone else might call them creaks. But to me, that's charm."

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