How to replace thin wood flooring in old, uneven houses
Thin or non-refinishable wood flooring in older, settling homes cannot be easily sanded down, making a full replacement a massive undertaking. Homeowners often struggle to find a workable strategy for handling these floors, especially when dealing with uneven subfloors and multiple ongoing renovation projects.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Having a flooring technician screw down an underlayment and use glue-down LVPDid this help you?
- 2Tearing out old floors and putting down new plywood or OSB before laying LVPDid this help you?
- 3Pulling up thin hardwoods and installing tileDid this help you?
- 4Keep the current floor and invest in rugs or other floor coverings to distract from what you don’t like.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I'm struggling to figure out the best strategy to replace this flooring.”source ↗
“Just bought a brand new home and looking to replace the LVP before I move in, not very handy but I feel like I can do this with some help on YouTube.”source ↗
“Since it’s brand new is it as simple as removing the baseboard, removing the old LVP and cut new LVP and install? Or should I get new subflooring”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 5How to match vinyl flooring to existing wood
- 10How to fix a flexing wood floor without replacing it
- 4Can you put new flooring over old pine boards without a subfloor?
- 13How to know if old hardwood floors can actually be refinished
- 13How to tell if uneven flooring panels are defective
- 14Rain ruined the wood floor in my rental, what happens now?