When taking up flooring, you never know what you will find underneath. We have seen it all, from glue left over from previous floors to plywood being pieced together with other types of flooring, creating a patchwork of materials that can be both surprising and challenging to work with. Sometimes you are able to feel or hear what is beneath the flooring, such as creaks and groans that hint the subfloor is either damaged or has imperfections in it. In some cases, we uncover unexpected issues such as water damage or mold that require immediate attention. This unpredictable nature of flooring removal not only brings excitement to the job but also emphasizes the importance of careful assessment before proceeding with installations or renovations.

Here you will find a few examples of what we have discovered.

Here we have an uneven subfloor because of loose plywood and parquet wood flooring under the original carpet. This becomes an issue because we were not going back with carpet but using a glue-down LVP, which requires a smooth and flat subfloor.

We received a call about some tiles pinching up and becoming loose. This was later found to be caused by loose thinset because the glue from the previous floor was left down. Because of this leftover glue, the thinset could not properly adhere to the subfloor.

Cracks can sometimes be a sign of moisture; other times, they are a sign of the slab moving and adjusting. Either way, depending on the floor type that’s going to be installed and which type of crack this is, it still has to be addressed.

When taking up hard surface floors, you sometimes run into issues with previous prep work and subfloor repairs that were done prior to the last floor being installed. Here, we were taking up hardwood, and the concrete was chipping off with it. This caused an uneven, rough surface that we had to repair before installing new floors. This could not have been seen prior to taking up the floor.

Space between the joints of plywood is a common thing to run into in homes. This is not an issue for carpet, but for a thin glue-down product, it would prove to be an issue. The gaps would be seen in the product and would cause damage to the flooring over time due to a lack of support and unevenness.

Here we have other people’s pipe work and subfloor repairs. A majority of the time we have to fix others’ subfloor work because it doesn’t meet the standards for our flooring. Most electricians and plumbers are not concerned with how smooth and even the floor is after their work is done, so it falls upon us to address and fix these issues prior to installing new floors.