Can a floating floor (engineered wood, not laminate) be installed over existing hardwood floors that were glued down? We live in the southern US and have a concrete slab foundation. When the house was built, the builder put engineered hardwood (glued to the slab) in the dining room. The people that bought the house decided they wanted that same floor throughout the downstairs, so they had the carpet pulled up from the bedroom and living room and hallways and put the same engineered wood (again, glued to concrete) down. The problem was that the dining room and living room are open to each other - to get around this issue they simply put molding in between the rooms (instead of pulling up the floor in the dining room and redoing the entire downstairs at once so the planks"flowed" properly).

We then bought the house, have lived with it, but always hated that transition from living room to dining room (looks choppy) and would much prefer to have one single flowing floor throughout (we also would like the finish to be darker, and wider planks). There does not appear to be any *problem* with the existing floor (it's held up well I do believe - looks pretty decent, feels solid), other than we just don't like it

We'd like to have new engineered hardwood installed but are wondering if the existing floor must be demoed? It's 15 years old glued down; I imagine it would be terrible difficult to remove. Advice?

I wouldn't go over it because the flooring may be holding up to any vapor emissions that are getting through the adhesive now, but once you cover it up it will trap those emissions.. I'd test first with a Wagner Rapid Rh test/s - 3 per 1,000 sf and one for each 1,000 sf after.
Just think if you go over it and it starts to fail. Now your demo'ing two floors.

SP:

I wouldn't have thought of that. Good look at all angles to a story.

Personally, I'd tear out the old. I don't see a cost concern. Yes it can be difficult, time consuming and extremely messy. It can also depend on how well the original floor was installed. That's one way of removing; all manually.

Then there's the other option which eliminates a lot time and mess with the use of a demo team that specializes in floor removal with specialized equipment.

The video shows a solid 7/16" BR111 hardwood removed from concrete.

http://www.hardwoodinstaller.com/proble ... htm#remove

Nice video Ken. Those machines are not in every town though. You may also try renting a walk behind machine instead of a rider.

True. More like larger towns and metro areas. The guy in the video had a lock on the SW Florida market, until others got into business for themselves. Now he's lucky to get half what he did four years ago, but the equipment paid for itself very quickly.