Hardwood flooring under there?

curiousbird · 06-03-2009, 11:27 AM

About to take on a big project and am curious about the flooring situation.
The house currently has awful carpet throughout. Upon pulling up a small section of the carpet, I found pad and then plywood underneath. However, when I go down to the basement and look up, there are 2" wood planks directly above with nails coming through about every 20" or so.
Does this mean that wood flooring exists under the plywood? Would that be the original flooring and usable? The house was built in the 30's.

I understand the wood I'm looking up at could be warped, damaged, and riddled with nails holes, but would it be usable if patched and refinished?

Thanks for any help.
Total newbie here.

Wood Floor Guy · 06-04-2009, 09:13 PM

I wouldn't count on that floor being useable. It's probably a low grade fir or maybe pine, non tongue and grooved subfloor. Even if you could pull up the plywood and the 2" strips looked refinishable, you'd have a really, really "flexing floor".

I live in a house built in 1784 which in many part has only 3/4" planking directly over the joists. It flexes alot, and it is part of the character of the house, but I sure wouldn't recommend creating that situation by choice!

Wood Flor Guy

curiousbird · 06-05-2009, 09:50 AM

Thanks for the advice. I was sure that all homes built in this area in the 1930's had wood floors, with carpet being installed later, ya know, to be luxurious

Perhaps below the plywood sits some decent flooring before getting to that subfloor? Just don't understand why they would nail down plywood...problems are probably lurking.

The suspense is killing me. The current tenants are still in there and we have a month to wait it out.

Fingers crossed something good happens.

pinwheel45 · 06-05-2009, 10:24 AM

More than likely, if you're careful removing the subfloor, it's salvagable. Flooring was just nailed straight to the floor joists rather than to a sub floor. I've refinished quite a few just like that in NE Missouri built around that same timeline.

rusty baker · 06-05-2009, 10:44 AM

The way my oak flooring was installed violates almost every standard. But it's been down 110 years and it looks great.