Thank You in advance for any help I may receive! Still in early stages of project. Preparing for estimates and was hoping to get some guidence. I am pretty handy and am willing to do some prep work but want a pro to do the install of the new floor.
Here is the situation.
House was built in the early 1920's. I live in Baltimore. The subflooring in my house is 1" thick by 4" wide pine T&G.
On top of the T&G is a hodge podge of face nailed oak hardwood including about %80 3/8" thick 1 1/4" by 8" Parquet strips in groups of 6. The other %20 consists of 2" wide planks and 1" accent strips that border the planks on the outer edges of the rooms.
I would like to have 3/8 " thick hardwood plank flooring at 5" wide.
My question is, should I remove the Hodge Podge flooring, inspect and sure up subfloor, and put down 1/2" plywood. Or can the flooring be nailed through the existing hardwood into the sub? I'm worried about the amount of nails in the existing hardwood.

It sounds like you have what is a 5/16" face-nailed parquet in the field with a 2" strip border and a feature strip. Before you demolish that floor, please consider the possibility of restoring it. If you can post a picture of it, we will tell you whether or not it is salvagable. To post pictures directly, you need to have them on another host site. Or you can e-mail them to Ken here and he will post them for you. Give us as much info as you can about the floors and provide as good of pictures as possible. You may have a beautiful, traditional floor of very high value that just needs some TLC.

Thank You for the reply Gary. The reason we are looking to replace floors is because we have been told that they can't be refinished. they are down to 1/4 inch thickness. I will email some pics to Ken. I would love to not spend the $ for new floors if the existing could be saved. Some of the border pieces have been replaced with newer flooring since there were walls there.