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Lay engineered wood floor over existing engineered wood floor?

C_ Mav
3 years ago

Hello! Just bought my first home. It is a townhome with the main living area on the second floor on Houston, TX.


Backstory:

The previous owners moved a fireplace which was dividing the living space into two areas to make it more open. We like the openness, but unfortunately they did a bad patch job to fill in the area missing needing floors. Seams are not even, some areas are sanded down to what looks like plywood, nails were installed on top vs hidden, etc. Six different flooring companies looked at the floor and gave us mixed answers (half thought they were solid, others thought engineered). We have finally come to the conclusion that although the original floors looked like solid wood, they must be engineered wood which is why the patch job was hard to match (plank strips are 2 3/4", so match wood must have been sawn to try to match).


Problem:

So now we are looking to replace the entire floor since we will not be able to replace the damaged section. Question to the community: 50% of the floorers are telling us to remove the current floors prior to installing, 50% are saying to install it over what already exists. I assumed removing the floors is the right thing to do and the others are just trying to find shortcuts, but they made a good point that the current engineered floor is basically like a plywood subfloor, so no need to remove it. In either case, they would be prepping (sanding) the floors and leveling (or is the term floating?) prior to a glue down installation of new engineered hardwoods. What do you all think? Is it worth the extra $1500 to remove ~700 sq. ft?


P.S. This morning I moved the dishwasher and found exposed subfloor.




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