We made a construction mistake years ago when we decided to floor our first floor with tile over a plywood floor on a pier-and-beam construction house. As the foundation settled over the years, we had cracks run across a couple of fault lines across the house and some tiles routinely pop up in trouble areas. So now that I have two nickels to rub together, I intend to undo the whole mistake by taking out much of the tile and replacing with a wood floor, on the theory that wood will bend more than tile. And I've come to the collective wisdom of the board to advise me before I call the contractors. First, I have to take up the tile, and I think that's something I can do myself instead of hiring out. Tiles are popping up of their own accord anyway. I know it'll be tiring, but it doesn't seem like a job that needs much special skill. Is that a mistake? Second, I need a subfloor. Part of the problem of the original job, imo, is that we laid the tile down on the ply and dispensed with subfloor. So, I think I should put one this time. Considering the construction of the house and my concern for further settling or sagging, is there a subflooring type to be recommended. Also, is this something I should do myself or hire out? The last thing I want is to get another bad floor. Third, the floor itself. I lean toward hiring this out to a company so I have some comfort it'll be done right, and have the work warrantied. Should I do real wood, or has the fake stuff gotten good enough? Does anyone have a company recommendation?
As far as the tile, yeah I would take it out myself if I were you. It's not that hard but you still need to smooth everything out so that your subfloor will be level. All these pieces of wood lock together so whatever your floor rests on has to be level. I have a concrete slab that I had tile. I removed the tile from the areas where it was present. I then decided to glue the hardwood floor down to the slab. Huge mistake. The glue is messy and time consuming. It looks great but I spent a lot of time cleaning up glue finger prints and excess glue. Once I got to the stairs and upstairs, I was able to usae a nail gun to fasten the wood to the plywood. It's been 8 years and no problems. Cutting the wood and piecing everything together wasnt that hard and Im not an expert at it. I saved a lot of money doing it myself. Maybe one compromise is having someone put in a subfloor for you and doing the rest yourself. I'd go with the real wood but that's just me. People walk in our house and notice our floors right away.
If the tile is already coming up that easily then you can do it yourself, but really that part of the job is not that expensive. You probably won't save as much money as you may think in terms of of total cost of the project. The tiles we had in the house were glued down pretty well so it really took some heavy machinery to remove as much excess as possible. Sub flooring seems fairly straightforward enough but the bulk of the cost is the materials, not the labor. As for the actual floor, I would certainly contract it out if you decide to go with real wood...and I do recommend real wood. The cost is more but at the end of the say, you will be happy with how it looks and it will be there forever. I used Joe's Hardwood floors. Found him on angies list after getting a few bids. He isn't the cheapest by any means but the guy is nice, responsive and the work done was/is fantastic.
I work at a flooring store. If you want, I can come and give an estimate. I would definitely recommend a subfloor of plywood and backer board. Would definitely get it professionally done. If it's not level, you'll be in for a dejavu experience. Real wood while great, has issues with Houston humidity. I would go towards engineered or laminate depending on your situation. DE Flooring Granite and Remodeling. Find our fb page more helpful since our actual website is a problem that we are trying to update to resolve. https://www.facebook.com/D.E.Flooring
You can do this 2 ways but let’s start by addressing the issue with the tiles. It could be caused by 2 things. If you put tile directly on the subfloor, then the plywood soaked up the moisture from the mortar before it had a chance to set. The other issue could be the subfloor wasn’t thick enough to remove the “bounce”. Maybe a little of both but hard to tell without more info. (Future tile jobs should always be on durarock or hardiboard). 1) You could construction adhesive any loose tiles and lay floating engineered wood on top of the tiles. The tile is actually a decent water barrier but you might have door height issues. Interior doors are easy to cut the bottoms. Exterior doors are more work to raise the threshold. The bad thing there would be if a tile comes loose after the install...it will make noise to walk on that area. 2) Or the rip up the tiles route - Getting the mortar up off the plywood might be an issue. Personally I don’t know. It might come up easy or it might be on there good. If it’s on there good and can’t be scraped up easily, then you will need to tear that layer out of plywood (there are usually 2 layers) and lay down new subfloor. If you can get most of it off, you still will want to lay down a fresh sheet (can be thinner) on top of it to give you a clean surface. Glue and screw any new plywood subfloor down and lay it down going the opposite direction of the old. In the end you will need at least 1 inch of plywood subfloor (1 and ¼ preferred). Lay roof felt on that to keep moisture from coming up from the crawl space and warping the floors. You are supposed to lay down the wood perpendicular to the floor joists to keep them from bowing between the joists but on my old house for personal reasons I did that in all rooms except the ½ bath. It was small enough that I never could tell even 10 years later so I’d leave that up to you.
While wood floors can have problems in high humidity, I think it's pretty minimal given, 1) proper installation/sealant 2) If the wood is inside then the humidity levels usually don't get consistently high enough for damage. Wood floors are extremely common in houston after all.
Definitely use a subfloor. As far as the look, you cannot beat real wood. Engineered wood is good if you have a slab-on-grade foundation that has not been dropped in anticipation of a wood floor, but for a pier-and-beam home, I'd say natural wood is the look you're going for. As long as you have a level subfloor, and install them properly (i.e. professionally), you really shouldn't experience too many problems. All of the builders I design for use natural wood on pier-and-beam homes, and none of them have any problems.
Yes, this is all true. I advice from personal experience and work stories. There are plenty of beautiful solid wood floors in Houston, and with proper care, can last many years. Maintenance however is easier on the Engineered and Laminate.
Maintenance may be easier in the short run but it's still pretty easy to maintain hardwood floors and hardwood will last a lifetime. Resealing is something done every 10 years or so and refinishing is hardly ever done period. As for day to day up keep i just don't see much more work than cleaning any other floor. I'm just high on hardwoods because at the end of the day, it's going to look the best. I was tempted by engineered at first but after the hardwood floors done, I couldnt even imagine going with anything else. But again, my situation was different, i.e. I was trying to match the rest of the house's original flooring
