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Flooring Repair Cost in Ontario: Replacing Boards, Swapping Planks, Resetting Tile, Squeaks, Scratches and Why the Minimum Charge Is the Whole Story
Flooring & Tile
What It Costs to Fix a Floor in Ontario, and Why One Cracked Tile Can Cost $900 While a Whole Bathroom Costs $1,400
The thing nobody tells you about flooring repairs is that the work is small and the visit is not. A man has to drive to your house with a trailer of tools, protect the furniture, cut out the damage, match the material, fix it, clean up and drive home, and he can do roughly one of those a day. That is why nearly every flooring repair in this area lands at the installer’s minimum charge, $1,500 for wood and plank work and $900 for tile, whether the damage is one board or ten. Here is what the common repairs involve, what moves them off the minimum, and when you should stop repairing.
The minimum charge, and why it is fair
An installer’s day is worth about what a day of laying floor pays him. At $5.50 a square foot for nailing hardwood and 300 sq ft in a good day, that is $1,650 of labour; at $10 a square foot for tile and 90 sq ft a day, about $900. When he gives up a day to fix your floor, he charges roughly the day, and that is the minimum you see on the quote. A handyman will be cheaper, and for a squeak or a scratch that is often the right call. For a board replacement in a prefinished floor or a tile reset in a shower, you want the man who does it every week.
$1,500installer minimum, wood and plank
$900installer minimum, tile
$0.75per sq ft, screw down a squeaky subfloor, floor up
$6.00per sq ft, replace rotten subfloor sheathing
The common repairs
| Repair | What is involved | Expect |
|---|---|---|
| Replace 1 to 10 hardwood boards, nail-down, prefinished | Cut out the damaged boards with a track saw, chisel the tongue off the replacement, glue and face-nail it in, fill the nail holes. Needs matching boards from your leftover boxes; a new box of the same product three years later is a different colour. | Minimum, $1,500. More boards in the same room add little. |
| Replace boards in a site-finished floor | Same cut-out, then sand and refinish the patch, which never quite matches, or refinish the whole room, which does. What refinishing is. | Minimum for the boards; refinishing the room is a separate trade at $3 to $8 a sq ft. |
| Swap damaged click LVP or laminate planks | If the plank is within three rows of a wall, pull the trim and unclick back to it; in the middle of a room, cut it out and glue a replacement with the locking edges trimmed off. Leftover boxes again. | Minimum, $1,500 from an installer. A capable handyman does the edge-of-room version for much less. |
| Reset or replace cracked floor tiles | Grind out the grout, break out the tile without cracking the neighbours, chip out the old thinset, set the new tile, grout. If the crack came from a hollow spot or a subfloor that moves, the replacement cracks too. | Tile minimum, $900, for one to a handful of tiles. Same price for one as for six. |
| Regrout a shower or a floor | Grind out old grout to at least two-thirds depth, clean, regrout, recaulk the movement joints. Does not fix a leak; grout was never waterproof. | $900 to $1,500 for a standard shower or bathroom floor. |
| Squeaks, floor staying down | From below through an unfinished basement ceiling: shims, glue and screws into the joists. From above through carpet: special breakaway screws through the carpet into the joist. Through hardwood: angled trim screws in the board edges, filled, which works about two times in three. | Handyman job, often an hour or two. Through finished flooring with no access below, an installer minimum. |
| Squeaks and soft spots, floor coming up | Lift the flooring, screw the subfloor at 6 in. along every joist, replace any sheathing that is delaminated or wet, relay. | $0.75 a sq ft to screw down, $6.00 a sq ft for new sheathing, plus relaying the floor at the normal labour rate. |
| Scratches and dents in prefinished hardwood | Wax fill sticks and touch-up markers for small ones, which is what the manufacturers recommend and what you can do yourself for $30. Deep gouges are a board replacement. | $30 of supplies, or the minimum. |
| Peeling or opened joints in a floating floor | Usually the floor was pinned somewhere or had no expansion gap. The fix is freeing the floor, not gluing the joints. The diagnosis. | Minimum if an installer; sometimes free if it is the original installer in the first year. |
The leftover-box rule
Every repair in that table that involves matching material depends on one thing: you kept the extra boxes. Flooring comes in dye lots and production runs, and the same product number ordered three years later is a shade different, a hair wider or discontinued. Keep 5% of the floor area in sealed boxes, in a dry room, not the garage, and label the boxes with the room they came from. The $200 of planks you were going to return to the store is the difference between a $1,500 invisible repair and a $12,000 new floor because nothing matches.
Keep the tile too. One box, plus a note of the grout brand and colour and the thinset. Grout fades and the new bag will be lighter, which is why a tile setter regrouts the whole bathroom floor rather than one square.
When to stop repairing
- The subfloor is the problem. Soft spots, squeaks in every room, tile cracking along a line. Replacing boards and tiles over a moving subfloor is buying the same repair twice a year. Lift the floor and fix what is under it. Subfloor work and who pays.
- Water got under it. Cupped hardwood, swollen laminate edges, a floating floor that smells. The floor dried out; the mould under it did not. Lift it.
- You cannot match the material. No leftover boxes and a discontinued product means every repair will show. Replace the room, keep the extra boxes this time.
- The repair is a third of the new floor. A bedroom in mid-grade LVP is about $6.00 a square foot installed, so a 150 sq ft room is $900 of new floor. A $1,500 repair to it is not a repair. New floor prices.
- It is a solid or engineered hardwood floor with wear, not damage. That is a refinish, not a repair, and a refinish at $3 to $8 a square foot buys you a new floor for a third of the price, if the wear layer allows it.
Questions people ask
How much does it cost to replace a few hardwood boards?
Expect an installer’s minimum, about $1,500 in Central Ontario, for one to ten boards in a prefinished floor, provided you have matching boards. Without them, the repair is a colour match that will show and may not be worth doing.
How much does it cost to replace one cracked tile?
About $900, the tile setter’s minimum, and the same for one tile as for five. Have him check why it cracked: a hollow spot under it, a joist deflecting, or a dropped pan all look the same from the top and only one of them stays fixed.
Can squeaky floors be fixed without removing the flooring?
Often. From below, if the basement ceiling is open, with shims, glue and screws. Through carpet with breakaway screws into the joists. Through hardwood with angled trim screws, which works most of the time. If the subfloor is loose everywhere, the floor comes up.
Is it worth repairing a laminate floor?
At the wall, where planks unclick, yes if you have spares. In the middle of a room with no spares, usually no; mid-grade laminate is about $5.50 a square foot installed new and the repair will cost more than a small room.
Will the original installer fix problems for free?
In the first year, for workmanship defects like squeaks, loose planks, hollow tiles and cracked grout, a reputable one will. Damage you caused, no. Material defects go to the manufacturer. How the warranties split.
Repair or replace, run both numbers
The flooring cost calculator prices the room new, removal included, so you can hold it next to the repair quote. If you have a repair quote and a replacement quote and cannot tell which is the fair one, the $99 quote review reads both.
Sources and further reading
- National Wood Flooring Association: the installation guidelines every hardwood warranty points to: subfloor flatness, moisture limits, acclimation, fastening schedules and the radiant-heat chapter.
- Tile Council of North America: the TCNA Handbook methods for tile over wood, concrete and in showers, and the ANSI lippage and grout standards a tile setter is held to.
- Torlys: Canadian maker of engineered, vinyl and laminate floors; the installation and radiant-heat instructions are a good example of what the sheet in the box says.
