How do you fix a floor with no sub-floor?
by
Teresa
+4
When we moved here we rented now we bought. There was carpet in the kitchen so that was the first thing that we pulled up when we bought the place. Then I stopped counting at 5 layers of linoleum, and under that we found that our hardwood floor has a thick layer of tar paper? And the floor is splittering and very uneven and is half hardwood and plywood. There is no sub floor so how do we fix the floor?
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You're going to have to pull everything up to basic frame and lay down a subfloor . Now that you have pulled up what is probably a half century or more of shoddy workmanship , you cannot lay it back down and feign ignorance . The fact that the floor is splintering and uneven speaks volumes . Sorry
reminds me of a house my brother bought...built in 1808....I had to completely replace the floor joists, then the subfloor....this house actually had the wood fuse box that was made when electricity first reached houses....you may consider for that area a concrete steel reinforced pad to be your "foundation" for just that area...bet you are going to find a lot more hidden surprises....for instance under that tar paper may just be dirt....clay pipes...knob and tube wiring...hay bales for wall insulation covered with old newspaper...I used to restore houses and I have seen every possible house from hell you can imagine....some you want to bulldoze and start over....good luck because it is always more difficult to fix anothers mistake than to do correctly in the first place
The tar paper is for noise and moisture control. The half hardwood and plywood shows someone has been in there before. They wouldn't have used both back in the day. The hardwood was your subfloor at one time and there probably was a finished hardwood floor on top of that. Someone pulled it all up. The real way to fix this is very labor intensive. You have to pull everything up till it's just floor joists and then lay down plywood and just start from scratch. To level it there are a few ways to do it. The easiest is to lay out strong lines touching the highest joists making sure strings are level and adding 2x4 next to joists touching strings so all are at same height. You could also use shims on top of low joists but that's a lot of work because each one could be different thickness. No matter which way you go it's a lot of work. Down and dirty way is to pull up bad spots lay down plywood so it's kind of even, get a self leveling compound pour it out let it do it's thing and then lay down a 1/4" underlayment and go from there.
I would think a contractor should be called, depending on floor joists spacing, you may be able to lay 5/8or 3/4 " plywood down, then if ceramic tile is your choice, cement board over that. If you want linoleum, the store will know.
Hire Tom ^^^^^^