"CompleteNewb" wrote in message
. ..
House was built in 1929, plaster walls throughout.

I have been unable to convince my beautiful lady (she may wind up seeing
this) to let me try to refinish the existing hardwood floor under the
carpet we tore up (living room, first floor, with basement underneath).
In addition, a friend whose opinion I trust said I should go ahead and
replace the diagonal tongue-in-groove subfloor as well (it creaks like
absolute crazy along every inch, even when the 20-lb dog walks around;
every step is squeak-squeak-groan-creak). I was hesitant to do this,
because I'm all about trying to keep as much original stuff as possible
(I'm one of those grizzled old-timers that believes, whether I have proof
for it or not, that they just did things better "back in the day"), but I
can see his point about possibly needing to level the floor out better,
plus, with the amount of creaking we've got, and with the floor visibly
bowing under one's feet when we walk around, the number of screws we'd
have to re-tighten, shims to put in under the original subfloor, etc., it
would just be better to rip it all up and put in plywood subfloor. The
joists don't seem to be the problem, but even if they are, I'd rather fix
it at its source (adding joist shims before doing the floor) than keep
ramming the little shim here and there in 500 places.

AAAAANYWAY, my question is this: these are plaster walls, and the
subfloor goes farther underneath the wall than I will be able to get to to
remove the subfloor in the room completely. I can use a whipsaw and
remove it up to flush with the inside surface of the wall, but there's
still going to be little pieces/strips of subfloor under the wall where I
can't get to to remove it. Is that bad? Would a lot of you call that a
botch job, to remove as much subfloor as we can possibly get to, but
leaving that little amount under the actual wall? The guy advising me
says there's really nothing else to do; the original builders (or at
least, whoever did this room as it is now) did the floor, then they did
the walls on top of it, so I can't get access under wall to remove the
small amount of subfloor under the plaster wall.

So we're going to put in little spacers in between the joists up to the
edge of the wall, just to have surfaces to nail the edge of the subfloor
into, but there's still going to be little strips of subfloor under the
actual wall.

Again; is this normal, or would it be considered cuttng corners/botching
the job/leaving heartache for future work?

Any advice, opinions, etc. would be appreciated, and thanks for reading.

No problem. Just add subfloor supports secured to the existing joists if
needed along the walls. Caulking, the new flooring, baseboards, and shoe
mold (if used) will cover any gaps. There is no practical way (or need) to
replace wood under a wall without removing the wall.

Don Young