Pulling up glued down engineered flooring for re-use
Steddy
| Posted in Construction Techniques on
Has anyone pulled up a glued down floor before? I’m curious if it can be done in a way that leaves it acceptably reusable, i.e. long sawzall blades, a little clean-up etc.
The back story is it’s my own place and the best deals I find on craigslist flooring (not wanting to pay retail – likely a rental soon) are floating/glue/nail – not click together. I have dreams of a second remodel in the future in which the floor plan would change and I’d reuse the flooring. Tons of work has been put into the house and I just don’t think I can downgrade to cheap laminate.
Replies
Floor scraper
I'd try a floor scraper. It should get under the flooring and cut the glue. Unless the flooring wants to delaminate it should work. If the flooring does want to delaminate, nothing will work.
Yes, interesting idea - hadn't thought of it. I take it you haven't tried it yet, though?
I've also wondered about using caulk instead of glue, as it would be easier to cut versus glue - don't know if that would be highly unrecommended, though.
Steddy
Get a floating click lock engineered floor and value your labor.
and buy it with thought of your future plans.
I think you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. If you want to be able to pull the flooring up intact then you must use a minimum amount of inferior adhesive. If you want to do a good job you must not .
it would be like trying to reuse tile.
can it be done...maybe, but in the time you would spend being carefull pulling it all up, cleaning it and sorting through what you can reuse you might as well buy new stuff.
if your foot print will be any larger (at all) youll need to get more flooring anyway (this assuming you pull every piece off intact and can reuse all of it), and finding a craigslist deal that will match the floor will be a miracle.
Yup, you're all speaking the right language; I'm sometimes not thinking the right one. I think I got talked into just stapling it and moving on. If the remodel happens (taking out a staircase and needing flooring there) - deal with it then. Too far in the future if at all; I just have done all the rest of the house planning for future expansion - wiring in a way to be easy opening the wall, etc.
I bet the right touch with a thin sawzall blade would have a chance at re-using stapled planks. Thanks all, and great thinking there, stuck between a rock and hard place guy!
Reply to glued wood
Although I have not tried to remove glued flooring, I have removed glued Formica from both wood and masonry surfaces, with good results. I use MEK ( methyl ethyl ketone ) as a solvent. Put the MEK in a syringe, squirt along the leading edge and work the solvent with a thin putty knife. You will need a well ventilated room. I hope this works for you. Just remember, no matter what method you discover to pull those boards up, it will certainly required a great deal of time and patience in order to save the boards. Sometimes the time spent is just not worth it.
The room should be VERY VERY well ventillated. MEK is nasty stuff.
Been awhile, thought I'd drop in.
Ooopps, now I can't see what the other folks said.
Reuse? Extremely unlikely. About the only glue down type floor I've removed that could be reused was the 80's Hartco foam back parquet, but I only removed one. Maybe it was installed poorly.
The better installed ones on concrete pull up chunks of concrete with it. Wood subfloors, forget it.
This was an easy one because the floor patch came up with it. And the machine helped
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPceLrd2Cxo