Hardwood Floor Removal in Pompano Beach, FL

Nailed strips come up row by row with pry bars, and the nails stay behind in the plywood. On a slab, nailed wood means a plywood or sleeper base was built first, usually over a vapor retarder (American Hardwood Information Center). Decide early whether that base stays. Tarkett won't allow its engineered planks over plank wood laid straight on a slab.

• Plywood left in place: Provenza wants it nailed or screwed every 6 inches along the joists and at 12% moisture or less.

Glued boards are the slow, expensive kind to remove, and the adhesive stays on the concrete. Fixr's figure of about $6 a foot is for wood on concrete where three layers may have to come off. What has to happen to that adhesive depends on what's next. ARDEX wants it wet-scraped to a thin, well-bonded film under its leveler, or ground off to clean concrete if a moisture-control coat goes down.

A floating floor isn't fastened to the slab, so it comes up in sections, along with its foam or film underlayment, with no adhesive left on the concrete. Don't reuse the old underlayment: Pergo, for one, specifies a new 6 mil polyethylene sheet on concrete with seams overlapped 8 inches or more under its locking engineered floor.

Older parquet was often laid in cut-back asphalt mastic, a black adhesive the American Hardwood Information Center lists for block and parquet floors. Pergo's instructions warn against chipping or grinding asphaltic cut-back adhesives and old resilient flooring, because they may contain asbestos. Have the adhesive tested before anyone grinds it, and follow the result.