Hardwood Floors and Rubber Cement?


  #1  
Old 03-01-08, 09:23 PM
B
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 1
Upvotes: 0
Received 0 Upvotes on 0 Posts
Hardwood Floors and Rubber Cement?

Take it easy on me here, because I have two left thumbs and am probably asking a pretty dumb question, but here goes.

My dishwasher blew up. This led me to the rather lame discovery that the hardwood floor must have been installed AFTER the dishwasher, because it wouldn't easily fit through the space between the bare floor and the countertop.

Doubly lame was the fact that the hardwood floor planks (I don't know the technical name) closest the dishwasher were nailed to the subfloor firmly such that they couldn't be easily removed to give a little extra space for the dishwasher. This set up a herculaen effort that was laborious and damaging.

Me and another grown man managed to wrestle with the dishwasher, pound on it at times, and flex our countertop to eventually pop the sucker out of the hole, and we ended up scraping off some plaster, and scratching up our otherwise beautiful hardwood floor to do it.

Once the broken dishwasher was out, it was fairly easy to remove the hardwood floor planks nearest the dishwasher hole with a clawhammer, which we did in preparation for installing the new washer.

This particular post isn't about fixing the aforementioned scratches (I'll save that for later), but what I'm wondering for the moment is how I can put the wood planks back in place after the install in such a way that we never have to go through that crap again.

I talked to a seeminly knowledgeable guy at Lowes, and after some discussion, the working plan became to peel back the felt paper and have a few dots of rubber cement gluing the planks to the subfloor, which I was hoping would keep the planks from moving around loosly, but be easy to pry up with a screwdriver (since a clawhammer wouldn't fit without removing the washer) should we need to gain access to the washer again.

So my question to everyone out there is: is that a dumb idea, or do you think it would work? Are rubber cement dots strong enough to hold everything in place, but weak enough to be pried up easily? Should I try something else entirely?

Thanks in advance!
 
  #2  
Old 03-04-08, 01:43 AM
K
Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Posts: 1,126
Upvotes: 0
Received 0 Upvotes on 0 Posts
Maybe easier to detach the sink plumbing, get under the countertop and unscrew that?
 
  #3  
Old 03-04-08, 03:49 AM
connie's Avatar
Banned. Rule And/Or Policy Violation
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 926
Upvotes: 0
Received 0 Upvotes on 0 Posts
Speaking of dumb questions...

Did you shorten the legs as much as possible in the front, slide shims under the shortened feet so the machine could "climb" up to the hardwood? Then, a big sheet of cardboard to slide it out until you can do the same for the back legs. (One may have to lever it up with a crowbar to get the shims under, then use the claw to pull it forward.) I don't think rubber cement is a long term solution
 
 

Thread Tools
Search this Thread
 
Ask a Question
Question Title:
Description:
Your question will be posted in: