My project 26 x 14

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nrtoma

Member
Joined
Jun 14, 2020
Messages
20
Location
Fernandina Beach, FL
1st time flooring project

70 year old Florida bungalow on a crawlspace with original pine floors except for the front room 26x14. Seems a limb pierced the roof during a storm in the last decade and ruined the front room. It was replaced with a new plywood subfloor and 5/8 in laminate. I think they spared every expense on the flooring. The rest of the floors in the house are beautiful. The laminate has cupped and the finish has either worn away or dissolved from puppy potty training.

The Floor is stapled down. The solid staples or cleats do not come up when the flooring is removed. I plan on driving them flush or grinding them with a cutoff wheel. I'll remove the floor in 3 ft wide sections dealing with the fasteners as I go.

Once the old flooring is removed I will survey for low and high spots, any protruding nails or screws from the subfloor, and seal the seams. If necessary I will use leveling compound to level the floor. Should I put down a 6ml vapor barrier?

I chose Flooret LVP 6ft x 9 in planks . I bought 10 % over + an extra box to cover rookie mistakes. I figure it will be 90 % prep work and 10 % install.

Your feedback would be appreciated. Thank you.
 
Began demo Saturday. Divided the room in 3rd's and began to remove the old laminate. Removed about 2 feet and ran into a 2 foot wide x 26 foot long section of glued down boards along the wall. What a royal pain in the behind. For you pros, is this common practice?

Spent Sunday grinding off the old glue residue. Dusty as all get out. While removing the glued down boards it ripped off layers of the plywood subfloor, creating large depressions maybe an 1/8 in deep. My idea is to use leveling compound to fill the voids. I considered cutting out the damaged plywood and replacing it until I saw that 3/4 plywood is $65 a sheet. Any feedback would be appreciated.

I surveyed the rest of the room especially the side opposite of the glued down flooring. There are 2 air vents in the floor and appear to have plastic sheeting around the edges of the floor visible. I am hoping this is a sign that the it is nailed down. My 63 year old body hurts today.
 
Don't you love demo lol
If you are putting a floating floor back down fill those voids for sure, no need to replace. Your floor can handle the wee bit of hatred plywood has for floor patch.
 
They glued those boards down on the starting rows to avoid face nailing where the stapler could not reach. Like Mark said, those places where the plywood is damaged aren't structural so you just need to make it smooth again.
 
Day 3; today's demo went smoother. Took up another 80 sqft of laminate after work. Finding that a majority of the nails are rusted and do not look like they would have lasted much longer. Have only found one so far that I was unable to remove due to the rust.
The subfloor was not screwed down and from the nailing pattern looks like they played find the joist with a nail gun. Will be screwing down the subfloor. There are 1/4 in gaps in the seems between some of the plywood sheets as well. Will be caulking them as well. Any suggestions on screws and caulk? Want to do right. Thanks again.
 
Do you think the nails were rusty because of water damage? If not I would look underneath the house and check to see how well the vents work around the foundation. If that rust is caused by moisture coming up from underneath the house through the floor, and then you should see what could be done to an eliminate that issue.
 
It is funny, the fasteners seem to have rust on the end that was in the flooring and not all are rusted. It is better than 50 % however. The shank that protruded through the subfloor comes out discolored but does not have rust like to top end. The former owner had insulation installed between the joists. The crawlspace is 18 to 24 inches in height and the ground is sand and old oyster shells, it is like crawling on a cheese grater. I'll check the vents, the wife has a snake/spider phobia and seals any opening she can find.
 
I was asked to go fix a laminate flooring that was installed throughout the small home nearby. The customer said it makes kind of a crunchy sound when you walk down the hallway.
She showed me where it was tight in the hallway and over by the dining room table. I came back a day later and cut out a slice of flooring near the wall in the hallway and at the end of the dining room. Now it has the correct expansion gap.
As I was packing my tools out to the truck my eyes caught an orange color in the cinder block on the foundation. It was filled with foam. I checked all the way around the house and every one of them was sealed up. The homeowner was trying to save money keeping cold air from flowing underneath the house.
Sealing those vents is an absolute no no. It holds moisture underneath the house and the only place it can escape is going straight up through the floor and into the home. The home should also have the correct number and correct size of vents so that there is enough air movement to allow moisture to flow out from under the foundation.
 
If I was building a home from scratch, I certainly consider totally sealing up the underside of the house. Maybe even pouring a 2 or 3-inch slab under the entire house in addition to the footings. Roll on a good coating of sealant for a membrane and you're good to go. . That's probably going to cost another $75 but hey it's worth it. 😁
 
for the longest time i had dreams of doing that to my dirt crawl space, then i realized my house is a pos and there is no point tryin to make it better so instead i pray every day that it will burn to the ground.
 
I finished pulling the last of the laminate last night. The rust I described earlier was limited to the heads of the "nails" the shank that was in the subfloor came out rust free every time. I would estimate about 60% had rust and the rest looked normal. The vents are open btw...

Found my first unlevel area. It begins at a seam in the subfloor. Hoping it can be reduced by using screws but I doubt I'll be that lucky. Thanks again for your feedback, it helps more than you know.
 
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Turns out the high spot was caused by a joist being too high. I could not gain access to that area of the house through the crawlspace, thank God. Ended up pulling up the subfloor and taking off about 3/4 in from the joist. I then ran stringers on the adjacent joists then on the trimmed one. Replaced the insulation and then the plywood. Straight as an arrow now.
 

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I did a job in a home once or there was two joists that were sister together directly over a center foundation. The outside wall foundation had settle a bit, and that caused the two by eight joists to scissor where they overlapped each other 12 ft away on the next foundation support. I cut out a section in the floor just like you did to discover what the actual problem was. Same as you I trimmed off the high spots and the floor was flat again.
I don't know how much it helped but I also added four lag bolts through each of the two pairs of joists that had scissored.
 
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Laid down the LVP yesterday. Found the room is 1 inch out of square, found out about halfway through the process. One of the longest days of my life, the wife is very forgiving. I ended up with some gaps in the joints, what do you use to fill them? They are probably noticeable to anyone else but they look like the grand canyon to me. Thanks
 
That would mean the locking mechanism didn't fully close and lock so it can do its job. How far out from a wall is the plank that didn't close up? Is it an end joint or a long joint?
 
There isn't really a filler for this sort of thing. If one plank didn't fully connect then each successive row might have issues. Are we talking 164th of an inch or an eighth of an inch? Also how wide is that entire room ?
 

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