How To Remove Your Old Wood Flooring?

Planning on fitting new wood flooring? Need to remove your old wood flooring that needs replacing? You’ll have to focus on several factors in order to get things done the right way. First and foremost, check the installation method of your old floor. It may have been fitted with the use of a glue-down, nail-down or a floating method. It’s crucial to check it, as the installation method will determine the way in which you should remove the old wood flooring.

First, determine the type of old wood flooring that needs replacing, by checking if it’s solid or engineered wood. How to tell them apart? Solid wood flooring is made of planks made of a single piece of timber, while engineered wood flooring consists of several layers of various woods with a solid wood layer on top.

Paying attention to health and safety considerations and from a practical point of view, it is also worth ascertaining whether there’s under-floor heating or under-floor electricity cabling underneath the floor. You’ll probably know all that if you’re the owner of the home where the old wood flooring is to be replaced. But, if you’ve only just bought it, try to bring up those issues when talking to previous owners.

Apart from those fundamental issues, you also need to pay attention to health and safety in a broader sense – that is, for instance, wear protective glasses and gloves, if need be. Additionally, remember to check if you’ve got suitable tools at hand, which includes a crowbar, chisel and a hammer. Also, make sure to use them carefully and in a safe way. Floors fitted using a nail down or floating method are considerably easy to get rid of. On the other hand, if a floor has been glued-down, the process of removing an old floor is more time-consuming and requires more effort.

Having said that, if you wish to recycle the old wood flooring, don’t rush and remove it with proper care, not to damage the individual boards. It’s crucial to protect the boards from any damage that may occur in the process.