DIY LVP Install questions

[IncrdblHulk7]

About to start flooring overhaul of the 1st floor of my 100+ yr old house. The house has gone through a couple of remodels over past few decades prior to my purchase that opened up the floor plan. The subfloor is the 5/8 1x4 pine boards shown in the attached picture. Bulk of the ~1100sq ft floor is covered with carpet or tile. Only the two corners of house were left exposed/stained. Because of the remodels (and viewing from basement) - the carpeted areas of floor have had a fair amount of patchwork. Floor does squeak in a few places under the carpeted areas.

So my plan is to install LVP across the entire floor. Sounds like I would do the following ...
1) remove baseboards, old carpet, and tile
2) screw down existing subfloor. Any advice on how many/spacing? only in areas of squeaks? I read somewhere that you need to insert 2 screws per board per joist. Seems like a lot.
3) install 1/2 or 5/8 plywood underlayment. Attach it ONLY to subfloor using 5/4 screws? advice on spacing?
4) check for level - if out, then tape plywood seams and use floor level compound.
5) install LVP
6) install baseboard and touchup

Am I missing anything? Any other advice?

Do you think I could break this 1st floor project into phases? therefore allowing me to more furniture from one quadrant of floor to another as I finish? Or is it better to tackle all at once since I want one continuous flow?

Thanks

 

[Incognito]

Everything sounds good. By quadrants I suppose you mean cut the 1100 square foot into about 275 square foot quarters? I'd have to see where the walls fell out so it's possible that works but I'd advise you to work wall to wall in the direction of the planks-----in as large sections as you can. So maybe halfs or thirds if that's at all possible because you don't want that stagger pattern to stop til you cut into the walls. Hard to explain but maybe you can figure out why.

 

[JPfloor]

Also maybe if the floor needs any work to get it flat (fill in dips) do that before the new plywood goes down. Roofing shingles and felt paper can help. Shouldn’t be any need for tape on the seams of the new plywood.

I agree, If you can fit the furniture into half the room that would be easier than quadrants. Then you could complete your rows.

Around 8” apart on the screws should do it.

 

[C.J.]

100 year old house is gonna have something out of whack just cus it’s 100 years old. Sagging joists, settling, all kinds of fun to be had with old houses. Might not be a bad idea to check your floor for flatness first. You can use roofing felt, roofing shingles, door skins, 1/4” plywood… to build up any low areas first. Then you can cap over all that crap with a nice layer of plywood.

As far as breaking your 1st floor down into sections, how about renting a Uhaul for a week and just emptying out the entire first floor. $40 a day is what the big Uhauls are running. Might cost you a few hundred for the Uhaul, beer and pizza but you’ll appreciate it when you have room to maneuver and actually work in your own house cus dragging sheets of plywood around furniture and breakable stuff doesn’t sound like fun.

 

[Incognito]

As far as breaking your 1st floor down into sections, how about renting a Uhaul for a week and just emptying out the entire first floor. $40 a day is what the big Uhauls are running. Might cost you a few hundred for the Uhaul, beer and pizza but you’ll appreciate it when you have room to maneuver and actually work in your own house cus dragging sheets of plywood around furniture and breakable stuff doesn’t sound like fun.

​

26' Truck​

Moving Type: 3 Bedroom Home to 4 Bedroom Home

• Inside dimensions: 26'2" x 8'2" x 8'3" (LxWxH)
• Door opening: 7'9" x 6'10" (WxH)
• Deck height: 2' 11" Length 23'5"
• EZ-Load Ramp

Rate $39.95
plus $1.09/mile

 

[JPfloor]

That’s a great idea!

But it does depend on where you are. Around here no commercial parking overnight. You might get away with one of those pods if you get a permit.

And moving everything outside and into a truck might be a lot more work than moving it side to side…

 

[IncrdblHulk7]

Back with more questions. Things got sidelined because getting some HVAC stuff taken care of before doing the floors. I think I could tackle the project in two waves, by moving major furniture from one side of house to other as we do floors.

So I have gotten a couple of quotes to see what it would cost to hire someone to do the job. To my surprise, both companies have suggested the following ... 1) both claim to have never added plywood underlayment over an old pine subfloor before and 2) both want to avoid ripping up the kitchen tile floor and instead want to build up entire floor to that height and LVP over it all.

So doing lots of reading, seems like screwing down old subfloor and adding 1/2 or 5/8 ply as underlayment is paramount to getting solid and flat base for LVP ... am I missing something? I get that ply by itself wont just make it flat ... it would require leveling either with compound or paper as we install it. Should I be leary of the idea to put LVP directly on old subfloor?

As for Kitchen ... the tile floor currently occupies maybe a 1/5th of the 1st floor. My thought was to rip it out and get back down to subfloor ... so that everything is on same thing. Building up to tile level seems like headache for doors, baseboard, and appliances. The one problem that the one contractor pointed out is that my kitchen cabinets were installed on TOP of the tile. I had not intended to remove the kitchen cabinets in this project. Do you think I could demo around base of cabinet OR will that be major pain? it looks to be to be 12x12 tile mortared to cement board which was nailed to subfloor. I think i could tackle ripping that up, but not sure how to best tackle cabinet area. any ideas?

 

[JPfloor]

Toe kick saw. This is a cheap model, there are better ones out there but if you’re only using it once… Get the right blade for ceramic/cement. It’s gonna make a dusty mess. A little water sprayed on and a shop vac will help.

https://www.harborfreight.com/68-am...=347&msclkid=f2b534b5cf741c23763257640e35bbd9

 

[kwfloors]

One thing leads to another on remodels.

 

[IncrdblHulk7]

Any thoughts on the tile removal? Worried that masonry board is going to be mortared/glued down.

 

[JPfloor]

If the cement board is just screwed down a crowbar should do the job. Just pry it up. Pull the screws after. If they mortared the cement board you’re going to want to use a demo hammer. Could be a real mess.

 

[IncrdblHulk7]

Slowly getting around to starting this project. I pulled up carpet in the most troubled area of flooring (had lots of squeaks). Found that previous installer used a bunch of floor leveler in the region to try to level it ... and it was quite busted up and turned to dust. As you can see there is still plenty on there that didnt break off.

I screwed all the boards in the region and eliminated about 95% of the squeaks/bounce. Covered things back up for now until I have bigger block of time.

Should I be concerned about the old floor leveler? my plan was to screw down all the old boards and then lay 1/2" ply over it all. Do you think I will need to break off the rest of old leveler? and new leveler? or try the felt/shingle option in that area? Trying to get a head start in thinking through how to handle this.

Thanks

 

[JPfloor]

I would try to get rid of as much of the loose stuff as you can. No need to worry about the thin parts if they’re well adhered. And yes, once you get it cleaned up fill in the dips with felt paper/shingles before the plywood goes down. Patch/leveler, as you can see, can be a problem over unstable floor boards.

 

[Incognito]

I agree------scrape anything that you can off with a putty knife but if it's really solid and secure you can leave it down and just feather away any significant lumps with felt paper or other shimming methods underneath the 1/2" ply. You just need it smooth enough for the fasteners to secure the sheet without any movement----bouncing off highs and lows.

 

[IncrdblHulk7]

So in the midst of all the demo. Ripped out all of the tile and cement board from kitchen. Ripped out half of the carpet and pad. Running into three problems ... 1) the kitchen floor (an old addition on the house) slopes slightly downward toward outside wall. 2) the main room has a slight rise over main beam in basement and 3) the kitchen and main room floors are therefore not in plane with one another. The threeproblems kinda coincide in the sense that it boils down to difficulty in flattening the floors across the two rooms. I think I could try using differnt plywood thicknesses and leveling compaound to try feathering the two together, but wondering if that will all be in vain.

Other parts of house have small dips. Thinking i would just put plywood on top of old 3" pine and then using leveling compaund on top???

Any ideas?

 

[kwfloors]

Pictures would help.

 

[JPfloor]

As mentioned in previous replies you would be better off trying to get the floor flat BEFORE you put down the new plywood. 1/4 inch plywood, shingles, felt paper, ect.

 

[IncrdblHulk7]

plywood in kitchen just temporary for now. Arrows in first picture attempt to depict to different slopes. Agree with post about leveling first, just struggling with how to do it! The kitchen is ~0.5" lower than main room. and slopes away at about .5"/8ft. differing slopes presents issue at the transition of the two rooms ... should I try to blend the two?

 

[IncrdblHulk7]

Broke out my dad's old laser survey level. Mapped out the bulk of 1st floor. The values are how many fractions of inch the floor is below level. so 25 = 0.25", 5=0.5", ...

The kitchen is the room in upper area. You can see how main house slopes DOWN toward bottom of page and kitchen area slopes DOWN toward top of page. I dont care about it being level, just flat within the tolerance of LVP. So new plan is to use 0.5" ply for bulk of house, .25" ply in the blue areas, and skim coat the green areas with thin coat of leveling compound (no ply in those areas). I think that should address the two different slopes enough to be FLAT.

Thoughts? Do you think I will regret not putting ply over the areas in green (the 0's)?

 

[Incognito]

I'd prefer to use layers of:
-felt
-1/8" lauan
-1/2" ply
-1/4'underlayment
to flatten that situation and finish with a complete layer of 1/4" undlerlayment plywood.

Second choice would be to level the whole floor with Ardex K15. That's a process.

Your way can be worked out but it's very unorthodox. When I was apprentice the Old Man use to tell me when I was trying to re-invent the wheel that my ideas were unorthodox. Over time I understood what he meant. After you do it a few hundered times then you realize why things are done certain ways and not typically other ways,