Laminate on top of hardwood

[BobK207]

I've got an older home (1930) & I've had the hardwood floors done; some in 1986 & some just last week (they were under carpet for 30+ years).

A full drum sand & refinish will have the floors looking like new.

Two of the rooms we just removed the carpets, had a very light sand (to remove the glue down carpet residue), stain, buff & fiinsh.

They're not new looking but very appropriate to an old house, we're going ot be doing some addion work so we opted for the quick & dirty solution.

If you don't want to spend a lot of bucks you could go the cheap route like we did in the two rooms. With an area rug you jsut have a hardwood border.

The condition of the floors will depend on how many re-carpets & how brutish the carpet people were. A ultility knife cross gain wil really show unless you fully drum sand.

If you remove the carpet be careful to get all the nail. tacks & pad staples up.

I'd either leave & clean the carpet OR remove & work with the exsiting hardwood. I don't really see the value of the lamiante when you've got the real thing cheers Bob

[Mr. Sawdust]

Hi y'all! I am moving to an old house and the whole living and dinin room is carpeted. I looked underneath the carpet and there is hardwood I asked the owners if the hardwood is still OK in condition but the cannot tell anything because they also bought the house with the carpe on. I am cash-strapped so I thought of just cleaning the carpet befor we move in. But I am somehow tempted to cover the floor with laminat because putting the laminate later requires a lot of furniture movin exercise. Is it OK to put the laminate on top of hardwood? Should ther be something that I have to keep in mind before doing this? Or jus take the risk and re-finish the hardwood under the carpet? Thanks i advance for yur thoughts

-- Mr. Sawdust

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Sure you can cover up the real wood, that rich looking natural material, with cheap plastic laminate if you want. IMO, it would be like buying a new car with a nice factory finish and painting it with a coat of latex using a roller. Unless thee is major damage, refinishing the hardwood will increase the value of your house.

[No]

I agree with the others. Tear up the carpet. I was in the same boat as you when I bought my first house. We were not sure what we would find. tore up a corner and saw hard wood. kept pulling. Wow, an incredible find. The carpet installers did, unfortunately, go a bit crazy with staples on the pad. One area, where the pad was torn, they must have used 200 or more staples! What a pain that was to pull up! My wife and I spent till after midnight pulling staples! After we did that we decided we only needed to lightly sand. We used a pad type sander, not a drum, these are more DIY friendly and will minimize the chances you ruin you floors. We then used a fast drying wood floor finish. We were able to put down several coats in one day and move in furniture a day or two later. Fabulon was the brand IIRC. It was a waterbased polyurethane IIRC.

[Joseph Meehan]

I think you would be far better off, refinishing the existing hardwood. Especially if you do it yourself, it will be less expensive and will give you a far superior product.

[roger61611]

Good grief. Even if unfinished, old hardwood floors look better than new laminate. You could get lucky and that carpet has been there for

50 years and the floors are prety well off.

[nospambob]

[Douglas Johnson]

It may not even require all that much refinishing. I pulled up carpet over hardwood. The carpet had probably been down over 20 years. The hardwood was very dirty, but the finish was basically intact. I

1) filled nail holes with a matching filler. 2) used rag to wipe some matching stain (it doesn't have to be a real close match) to cover up small scratches 3) buffed the floor with a hardwood floor cleaner 4) buffed again with wax.

All done. It doesn't look new, but does look good.

For buffing, I used a wool pad on a hand random orbital sander. For a larger area, you can rent one of those big bad floor buffers.

Laying laminate over it will be more expensive and less durable than a professional refinish. If I remember right, I paid about $2.50 a square foot for a full refinish in another room.

-- Doug