Hi All,

I'm just about to start a major renovation on my apartment, and I'm a bit concerned with how the GC has decided to tackle the floor.

My apartment is on the 37th floor of a building with slab concrete floors. Right now there are 3/4" solid wood parquet tiles glued down with something that looks like tar. There are no loose tiles.

The GC wants to trowel self-leveling cement over the parquet, install a vapor barrier over that, and then nail the wood (probably engineered) into the whole mess. Should I be concerned with this method?

I've been thinking that it will probably be safer to pull up the parquet, level the concrete slab, and then float engineered wood. How do I deal with the black glue? Can self-leveling cement be poured directly on to it?

Thanks so much! This whole process has been terrifying, and I'll never get through it without great advice from the experts. Thanks again!!

If you do decide to float the floor I would reccomend looking into a high end underlayment. A good sound deading underlayment makes a big diffrence in a floater. Still trying to figure out whats wrong with nailing a floor right into the thing.

Kevin, I don't think nailing to parquet glued to concrete will work too well. The parquet has small filets and the fastener may hit more of the joints than the wood. I also think nailing to glued floor would result in the parquet lifting with changes in Relative Humidity and Wood Moisture Content...
What do you think?