Which of my flooring areas is the wrong height :)

white25rs

Here is what I am working with:
Whole house is hardwood save for 3 rooms, one of which I am redecorating.
All the other parts of the house have level flooring throughout the rooms. This bathroom had linoleum and 1/4" wood under it.
I am going to lay tile in the bathroom, and eventually have to take this hardwood out because there are 3 or 4 types throughout the entire house?




To get an idea of the subflooring, take a look at this picture from my crawl space hatch:


As you can see, there appear to be tongue and groove 2x4s that are the subflooring, with an additional 3/4" plywood above. This seems to span the entire house (including the bathroom).

Should I rip out the 3/4" plywood in the bathroom and bring it down to half inch? The tile will be taller than the linoleum obviously I was also told that the hardwood may be improperly laid as is...

funfool

Hard to say what is going on with the subfloor with the photo.
It was very common to run 5/8" plywood on top of 2x subfloor. If that is the case, cutting it out and replacing it with 1/2" would only gain a 1/8"
Does not hardly seem worth it, unless it needs to be replaced anyways.
Since you would be changing the thickness of the plywood, can get most of it with a skill saw, then run around the edges with a sawzall and get the rest.
Will be time consuming, all for 1/8" .... if it is 5/8".

I would still lay 1/4" hardibacker down and then tile on top of it. Looks like the hardibacker would bring it flush with the hardwood floors, then another 3/8" for tile above the hardwood.
This would be a acceptable level, Although I would prefer not to have a bump in the floor hight.

Very few homes in my area that use 2x6 tongue and groove subfloor. then the beams are 4' apart.
Not sure I would be comfortable with just removing the plywood and then laying 1/2" hardibacker down on top of the 2x subloor to get correct bingo hight, will be to much flex.
I would be tempted to remove the 2x material also and bring it down to the beams, then frame in a new floor at correct hight, proper 3/4" subfloor with 1/4" hardibacker and tile.

Or maybe you could just remove the plywood, go underneath and reframe a new floor to stiffen it up, screw the 2x from the top side into new framing below, then would probably be fastest easiest and most stable way, could then remove plywood and build your tile floor up from there.

Is either quick and easy, live with the bump, or get creative and spend a extra day on it .... what counts is 2 years down the road, will you look at it and regret it every time you see the bump?

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white25rs

Thank you for the detailed response!

I understand what you're saying about flex in the floor. The joists are 36" apart, which is fairly wide, so I will leave the floor as is. I bought a roll of Ditra instead of the hardiback which I will be using. I just jumped up and down on the floor and couldn't feel any budging at all (will have the gf help me confirm that tonite - (totally just realized that sounds dirtier than it is hahah)). I think I may just lay it and deal w/ the slight difference.... after reading about the work required... I think I'll take the lazy route on this one

Thanks!

DannyT

you did pull all of the 1/4 plywood up didn't you?
can you take a better photo of the flooring layers. the layer above the tongue and groove subfloor doesn't look like plywood in the photo

white25rs

The wood you can see in the picture that is the bathroom flooring, appears to be plywood. Can you confirm?

Thanks