Floor advice
My parlor floor floor is made of lovely but fragile wood (pine? fir?) which consists of the original subfloor boards. I have now become sufficiently frustrated with the splinters and the need to avoid certain areas for fear of putting my foot through the floor. Therefore, I am overcoming my inertia and am considering either…
My parlor floor floor is made of lovely but fragile wood (pine? fir?) which consists of the original subfloor boards. I have now become sufficiently frustrated with the splinters and the need to avoid certain areas for fear of putting my foot through the floor. Therefore, I am overcoming my inertia and am considering either (1) repairing the floor in patches or (2) replacing the floor/having a real floor put on top. The floor is approximately 10×25.
Any advice as to which way to go? Any recommendations for whom to hire?
Your two cents are appreciated!
We sanded, stained and then polyU’d our 100 year old+ wide plank ‘sub-floors’. We love ’em that way. Especially given the many layers of linoleum that were on top of them.
We all walk on em barefoot and there’s no problem – no splinters.
Guess it all depends on one’s taste.
Hi – I just had quartersawn white oak parquet installed over my soft and creaking pine sub-flooring on my entire parlor floor. I’m thrilled with the results. Stained it with Mohawk Van Dyke Brown and used a satin poly. All doors had to be cut down – including pocket doors separating front and back parlor. This is an intact 1880s brownstone in Fort Greene so I was worried about doing something that would compromise its aesthetic integrity. No problem – the floor looks fantastic. There was no need to remove the old sub flooring and no need to put down ply-wood over it. Just a layer of paper. Also – baseboards weren’t removed. The flooring just buts up against them and new shoe molding was added. I lost a bit of height on the baseboard but it looks fine.
I did restore subfloor once, but they were almost like regular floors, no spaces between. Also the house was probably from the 20’s. So I think there may be differences in the kind of subflooring you find, based on the age of the house and the quality of the subfloor.
This is the original poster. First off – thanks for your tips!
One follow-up question, however, on installing a floor on top of the subfloor — my parlor floor has 2 sets of swinging doors & also one set of pocket doors, plus a fireplace. I am wondering how to reconcile an additional layer of floorboards with the elevation of the existing doors/fireplace. For those of you who put in a new floor – did you have to redo the doors (cut down the bottom???), or how did you work this out?
I’m an avid Brownstoner reader, but would never advocate restoring pine subfloors. THEY ARE SUBFLOORS and were never meant to be walked on directly–carpet or finished hardwood was always the intention. The cracks and splinters make them downright hazardous, and you hear every footstep on the floor below.
We recently put in a new bamboo floor in a large room on the second floor of our townhouse. Plywood was put on top of the subloor, and then the prefinished bamboo. It looks great and so far is holding up well. We used Precision Floors in Brooklyn and I thought they did a really good job–reliable and reasonably priced.
They can install unfinished or prefinished floors–we chose the prefinished for sheer convenience, but Precision also did a number of repairs on our other floors and did them well.
We are in exactly the same position now, and, although the broker and the seller advised against covering the pine, we are going to install hardwood. The pine planks definitely look charming, but two things helped us to make up our minds –
(1) My mother was sleeping over and, while walking to the bathroom, got a safety pin that had been lodged in one of the gaps between the planks stuck in her foot. That pin must have been tucked under the floor and just happened to get pushed out. Thankfully my mother had her tetanus shot (and tough feet), so she was fine after a few minutes of intense pain. But there are so many other possibilities that might not have turned out so well.
(2) An architect who came over told us about how the poor condition of the floor affects both the interior air quality and makes any problems with pests that might arise much more difficult to contain.
Anyway, we have a lot of area to cover now. Does anyone know of a company that supplies/installs sustainably harvested hardwood?
We had the same problem on two of our floors. We got a bit o’ crap from the brownstoner populace for wanting to cover up our soft, delicate pine floors with something sturdier, but we did it anyway (with a layer of plywood in between) and don’t regret the decision one bit.
Just my opinion. The prevailing opinion on this site will most likely be to repair the old floor. And that’s totally understandable since this site is largely about the appreciation of old things. But it’s my understanding (from reading other posts) that where there was only a pine sub-floor, the room was meant to have carpeting, which probably explains why it’s shredding beneath your feet.
Replace the entire floor with oak.
1800WOODFLOORS.COM
They refinished our existing floors in record time and it turned out completely fine (we only wish we had trusted our gut instinct and chosen a different stain color). They also install new floors, though I can’t necessarily comment on how well they can do that.