Installing Solid Hardwood Floors Over Particle Board

Like unfinished hardwood floors the prefinished types typically have tongue and groove edges on all sides.

Installing solid hardwood floors over particle board.

Spread flooring adhesive on the particleboard with your flooring trowel. The reason floating installations work and are the best suited for installation over a particleboard sub floor is because a floating floor is not secured to the sub floor in any area. Nails won t grip the particle board but screws do a better job. Use a thick piece of plywood to help shore up your particle board subfloor at least 3 4 inch thick.

The home is about 35 years old. Hardwood flooring that is fastened by any method whether it be mechanical fasteners or glue should not go over particle board. It is particle board and not osb. Last year we installed solid oak hardwood floor in our main bedroom and family room.

Start with a small area so you can reach across wet glue without stepping or kneeling in it. That option is floating a floor over top of the subfloor. But the additional height of both the particle board and the new flooring may pose a problem with doors and appliances. If desired particle board underlayment can be left in place if a floating engineered wood floor or a floating laminate floor system is going to be installed over it.

Solid wood floors should not be installed in basements or below grade. The reason you can only float a floor over particle board is because nails won t hold in the particle board and glue will ruin the particle board. If this type of underlayment is present it will have to be removed when planning to install a nail or glue down hardwood floor. They are available in 3 4 inch thickness as well as low profile styles that are 5 16 to 5 8 inch thick which are a good or installing over existing flooring.

Make a line of glue the length. To our dismay when we ripped up the old carpet we found that the whole subfloor was covered with particle board. I pulled up all the carpet and found 3 4 particle board over 1 2 plywood board subfloor underneath the carpet. We want to install either laminate or hardwood flooring throughout most of our home.

Installing solid hardwood floors over particleboard plain and simple answer is no. The particle board does not run under the walls.