Need help on old flooring?
Question:I am working on my bathroom floor. The house is about 100 years old, does not have a proper sub floor. I took up adhesive tiling previous owners had. What kind of prep work should I do? Some of the floor boards have also rotted from water damage, should I replace them?
Answers:
you should replace the damaged boards, and do not!! use
particle board. whether you choose to put down either vinyl or
ceramic tile, the particle board is not an adequate subfloor for
either product, nor will it meet manufacturer's specs. if you are going to do vinyl, repair the rotton boards and put down
a 1/4 inch luan subfloor. luan is finished very well on one side
which is a must for vinyl, as any imperfection in the subfloor will telescope up thru the vinyl and be visible.the subfloor should be screwed, not nailed with aluminum screws. other
screws or nails may rust and come up thru the vinyl and dicolor it topically. if you choose to do ceramic, replace the rotton boards first. then go to your lacal home improvement
store and purchase backerboard at least 1/4 inch thick. it comes under many different names, hardiboard, fiberock, durarock, ect. this should be installed with thinset (you can save money here and use bottom line gray mortor) and screws. use a better grade thinset when installing the tile.
they cost a little more, but have additional latex and polymers added to them which give them more grab. i would also use white to install the tile, especially if you opt for a porcelain tile.
hmmmm I think I saw something like this on DIY network. Im not sure if you should replace them or not but on the show I saw they used particle board as a sub floor over top of the flooring they already had down. What are you wanting to do to the floors now?? Tile wood?
The show I watched was Sweat Equity.
www.diynetwork.com Check it out they have message boards there and Im sure more ppl will be able to help you out there!
Good Luck!
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