hardwood flooring


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Old 04-07-09, 10:52 AM
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hardwood flooring

Soon I am going to be replacing the hardwood flooring in my living room. It's very old and not looking so good so my wife would like to have it replaced. I am going to remove the old flooring, which was nailed to the floor joists and which had no plywood as a subfloor. I am planning to use 3/8" plywood for a subfloor because I don't have much clearance under my hot water baseboard heating sections to use 1/2" or 3/4" plywood. Must I also use some sort of covering on top of the plywood or can I just nail the hardwood flooring right on top of the plywood and to the joists?
 
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Old 04-07-09, 04:36 PM
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Is the living space over a crawl space or basement? The only thing I do is lay down either 15# felt (not overlapped) or rosin paper to reduce the possibility of moisture from getting under my hardwood. Too bad you can figure out a way to go with a full 3/4" Advantech subflooring. You would be better satisfied. Is your hardwood terminating at the heater or going under it? If terminating, it won't matter about the subflooring. You could use the 3/4 and just cut around the heaters.
 
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Old 04-08-09, 03:03 AM
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Half of it is over a crawlspace and half is over a basement. My wife is concerned that if we go with 3/4 we would lose too much head space since we have low ceilings. As for the existing hardwood, it looks to me like the walls were built on top of it instead of having a plywood deck underneath. The baseboard heat is on top of the flooring but I think I can raise it up a little bit; it looks like there is some play with the piping in the basement. The 3/4 Advantech sounds good but I don't know if I have that kind of room. Are you saying 3/8 plywood is too thin for this application?
 
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Old 04-08-09, 03:07 AM
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Is it possible to sand and refinish the existing hardwood flooring?
 
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Old 04-09-09, 03:05 AM
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Unfortunately that isn't an option. The existing yellow pine floor boards have some rather large gaps between some of them and they look like they've been in the house since 1880, which they have. Plus, the new red oak flooring is sitting in my garage 'crying' to be installed! We thought about that option before we bought the new stuff but the because of the gaps we decided to go new.
 
 

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