Hi All,

My wife and I purchased a home that had engineered hardwoods in every room except the master which had real 3/4" red oak naildowns.

We planned to replace the engineereds and install new red oak nail downs throughout. During our quote process we contractors, we discovered the engineereds were glued onto the original 3/4" red oak hardwoods throughout.

We now plan to remove all existing engineereds and simply refinish the original hardwoods underneath.

Any advice on how to efficiently remove the engineereds without damaging the hardwoods underneath? I know Home Depot rents out floor strippers, or I could go chisel & crowbar.

I plan to do the demo and contract out the refinish work. Would love to hear some thoughts and opinions, especially if anyone else has tackled a similar task.

Thanks!
Andy

You have what i would call a real big mess. You will never be able to remove the eng without destroying the solid floor underneath. If they covered it up that would make me think they did it because the old could not be refinished for some reason so they just covered it up. Best bet would be to try and refinish the eng one time.

Is that because the real hardwoods would be likely tear apart due to the glue?

I think it's worth giving it a try just to see. Worst case, we'll end up taking out both of them and relaying real hardwoods.

If you were to attempt to remove the engineereds without ruining the hardwoods below, how would you go about it?

You will find out that its not designed to be removed, it will come up in tiny chips/splinters. There is not any way i know that it can be removed without completely gouging up the floor below it, then you would have to remove the glue thats left and that itself would be a ridiculous amount of work. If I was going to make an attempt I would set a circular saw to the thickness of the eng. floor and put cross cuts in the floor every 6" and try to pry that stuff up in six inch blocks. If its not a vertical height concern leave it and go over the stuff with a new floor.

Yes, I would agree w/ Kevin - it's going to be very hard to remove wo/ damaging the wood (a professional would probably more successful at it). But, assuming that you could get it up, then you'll have a lot of glue left behind and that can be challenging to sand (although it can be done). But, there is also another potential issue, and that is that the glue may have seeped between the seams of the wood (in the grooves) and if that happened, you will never be able to sand out all those lines. That just happened to us w/ some parquet that on top of perfectly good solid hardwood.

You're right that you could try it, esp if you are going to rip it up anyway. But, I'm not so sure it will work out.

Debbie Gartner aka The Flooring Girl
http://TheFlooringGirl.com
Westchester County NY

I agree with both Debbie and Kevin. It was probably covered up for a reason. In my opinion it is not worth the time or energy to try and save it. even if you manage to get it up without damaging it the extra cost of trying to remove the adhesive would make it not worth while. You are better off tearing everything up and installing new. But it seems you are determined to give it a shot instead of listening to the experts you asked for advise from, so knock your self out.

I appreciate your insight. We will rip and replace without trying to salvage the existing hardwoods.

Thanks for your time and assistance.