Replacing carpet with hardwood floor - suggestions, pointers please

Hi,
We have been wanting to replace the carpet in the family room and put in wooden floor. The family room is on 1st floor and under the carpet, it seems to have some sort of tile. Under the floor, there is crawl space and I can see wooden joists.

Here is a picture of the flooring under carpet.


What is my best option to replace the carpet? In future, I may want to add radiant heating to the room with under the floor heating pipes. (not sure I can take all that up in this remod)

For a nail down floor, do I need to remove the tiles or can I add plywood subfloor on top of the tile? (This room is 3 inches lower than rest of the house, so bringing the floor up by another inch wouldnt matter)
If gluing or floating floor are only options without removing the tile .. Is there any reason to not do those?

I am in the beginning phase of this project. So I am not tied to any firm idea yet. I want to know possible options and then research more.

Thanks for looking and your help

 

Adding another layer for subflooring will give a substantially more solid floor feel, while in some instances it is not necessary. Look around the room. What will be affected by adding another 3/4". Doorways, closet openings, wall molding. If you can live with the rise in the floor it may not be a bad idea. I just wanted you to know about the boogers that come along with raising a floor.

Not sure what type "tile" you have. Is it linoleum, ceramic (doubtful), VCT. Just need to know that.

 

yeah .. didn't think of other problems with the raising the floor. There are two doors, one to the garage and one to the deck .. so I think I dont want to go down that path.

How do I figure out what kind of tile I have? (could it be stone). Is black and rectangular and quite firmly set)

Thanks Chandler

 

If you are going to nail down, whatever that tile is needs to come out. Then check back with us and we will discuss subfloor thickness, joist size and spacing etc.

A 3/8" to 1/2" engineered hardwood floor could go over the top of the existing floor provided it is sound and in good repair. People carpet over things for strange reasons. I would take a good look at the whole floor before finalizing just in case there are surprises.

 

I would want to see more of the tile first to see if it ends up being a workable surface.

Probably not but you never know....

 

hopefully no buried bodies underneath

Because this is a functioning family room, I am planning to make a decision based on what I find in that corner. After I rip out the carpet, I would be expected to finish my job in a week or two.

So I am thinking, I will try to chip away one of those corner tiles/stones and that may yield more information about what material it is

 

If you need to chip, you've probably answered most of the questions. If you have floor registers let us know how thick the subfloor, what it is made of, and how many layers. If no floor registers, drill a 3/8" hole in the subfloor, take a nail with a head on it, stick it into the hole. Put it down far enough to clear the thickness and pull back up and catch the head on the underside of the subfloor. Pinch the nail at the top floor level, pull out of the hole and measure.

Plan on removing if you want any kind of nail down flooring.

 

no registers in the floor. (Those are the air vents right).

I tried to pull out the tile from one end using a pry bar. It chipped. Does that look like slate?



The nail method is to figure out the thickness of the whole subfloor? or just the thickness of the tile?
So to make it clear for me, I drill untill I see the hole from the basement/crawl space under the room?

Thanks ..

 

Is what you chipped out brittle? Is it VCT or Vinyl? Anyway, from the piece in your photo, looks like the floor will have to come out for nail down.

Yes, drill a whole in the floor until it breaks through to the basement. Then use a nail to go into the hole, and try to figure out how thick your subfloor is.

 

I agree with czizzi, it looks like vct, definitely not slate. It has to come up for hardwoods.

 

Before it was a family room, this was a breezeway between main house and garage and had those tiles. When the earlier owners converted it into a room, they put carpet on it. So would VCT be used in a breezeway (unheated room with screens on both sides). I am trying to look for VCT tile pictures to see if this matches with those. The broken pieces are not brittle. (I let them drop on garage floor from about 6ft and they did not further break, I cannot easily break the chips with fingers.

I will do the hole/nail method tomorrow and see what I find out.

How do I loosen the grout/mortar/glue whatever is holding those tiles?

 

Best way to get the tile up is using a slammer scraper. As for the glue, it may need sanding. Any idea when the tile was laid? If after say 1977, then the use of asbestos was not an issue. Prior to then, you may need help.

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VCT - vinyl composite tile is most likely the floor that you will see in your local supermarket. Yours may be a variation of this or a luxury vinyl tile.