Flashback: Sub-Par Subfloors
Once demo was complete on our house and we had salvaged the carpet to be used later, we got a bit of a nasty surprise. Our subfloors were sub-par.
In a perfect world, all subfloors should be made of plywood, which is strong, durable and made of a single piece of wood. Instead, our subfloors were made of particle board – not so great for a subfloor. Particle board is made of wood chips that are glued together and compressed – that means that a subfloor made of particle board will basically disintegrate if it gets wet – eek!!
Since we were putting down hardwood floors in a majority of the house, the particle board subfloors were an even bigger concern for us – as you all know, hardwood floors can get expensive and we didn’t want all of our money to go down the drain if our subfloor got wet. So, we sucked it up and sprung for new subfloors everywhere that we were installing wood floors or tile. We chose to keep the particle board in the areas that were staying carpeted (just three bedrooms) since these rooms were unlikely to get wet and carpeting would be relatively inexpensive to replace.
Once the decision had been made to replace the subfloors, the old particle board had to be chipped up – a nasty, messy job.
The black moisture barrier, a plastic tarp which is designed to keep moisture from the crawl space away from the subfloors, then had to be removed. Once that layer came up, we were greeted with a series of lovely holes where water damage had caused the plank subflooring to completely deteriorate in some places.
My favorite is the makeshift wooden bridge that we had to use for awhile to get from the den to the bedroom wing of the house – classy, right?
But, in the end, all of those holes were covered with brand new plywood, creating the perfect surface for our hardwood floors. Whew!!
Did you have any “sub-par” surprises in your home?
How horrible for you guys! I’ve seen pictures of your finished new hardwood floors on other posts – they are beautiful!! The extra expense to keep them protected was well worth it!
Oh my goodness – what a nightmare. I think you made the wise choice though – as much as it must have hurt your wallet. Love all the construction photos!
Thanks for the blog love, Liz! You guys have done some serious renovations to your home – looks great though!
Nodding because I have truly related to this. The floors in Germany totally shocked us, though. They were at least a foot of concrete, gypcrete, and rebar, and we’re in an apartment building.
So long!
Katie
how ’bout this…..none of the sliding doors in our home had flashing installed! the original sliding door would freeze shut during the winter so we decided to replace it with a beautiful Pella lovely; only to find that when we removed the old one NO FLASHING !!! and the subfloor and some of the joists near the door had gotten water damaged and rotted away. sooooo we made all the necessary repairs , installed the door and lived happily ever after…..no wait that hasn’t happened yet, we still live here LOL