Hi. I'm a new participant with a subfloor question.

We're replacing the kitchen floor in our 1913 house (from two layers of vinyl tile over luan plywood to either oak or bamboo strip flooring). The subfloor is three and a half inch wide pine t&g boards, about 13/16 inches thick, laid diagonally across 2x10 joists, 16 inches OC.

The subloor is pretty solid, except in a couple of areas: (1) the spots where the sink, refrigerator, and radiator were, where water damage over the years rotted out several sections of boards; and (2) and area where previous owner's renovation sawed through the subfloor boards just shy of a joist, leaving several inches of each board unsupported.

So we're going to have to replace several boards, at least. We also have some slight leveling we need to do. The question is, what is the best way to do this without building up the level of the floor too high in comparison to the adjacent rooms?

Should we try to replace the water-damaged pine boards? If so, how? Alternatively, should we take them all up and just start over with 3/4 exterior grade plywood? Any advice would be highly appreciated.

Thanks.

If it were me, and the existing subfloor is in good shape except for a few boards, then I'd remove the damaged subfloor boards and go to the local lumber yard and by some replacements. Since the existing sub flooring is running diaginal across the joists, you do not need them to be T&G. Just make sure that all the end butts fall securely on a floor joist. Then I'd renail or screw the existing sub floor down again to the joists as with a nearly 100 yr. old floor, some nails have worked loose, I'm sure. Then you will be ready to lay a new 3/4" T&G strip oak floor. If you are going to 5/8" bamboo, you may wish to install some 3/8" CDX plywood over the sub floor first, to add rigidity. You can remove the entire sub floor and replace it with plywood but I see no reason to do that just because you have a few damaged boards.

Gary --

Thanks -- that sounds like good advice. We'll hunt down some replacement boards and go from there.

100 year old wood. is going to be dimensional. Meaning a 2x4 is actually 2" x 4" instaed of 1½ x 3½