Do you plan to run the new floor in the same direction as the existing floor
boards?
If you went perpendicular or even diagonal to the existing floor I dont see
why a plywood layer would be necessary, provided of course the current floor
is level and structurally sound.


"Sean" wrote in message
...
I had new 3/4" hardwoods put over top of old 3/4" hardwoods without a
problem. 3 different companies told me it was not a concern before I hired
a guy. Not sure what your salesman was saying that for.


"CompleteNewb" wrote in message
. ..
So a guy from Empire came out to do an estimate on either carpeting or
hardwooding our floor. He pulled up some of our existing carpet, saw
that it's a hardwood floor underneath (it's in pretty crappy looking
shape; before you suggest just finishing it, I do plan to try sanding,
staining, and polyurethaning a 2' square section, but I have no hope of
it looking like something we'd want to be our floor), and he said it's
impossible to put a hardwood floor down because there's already one
there. He said if we do a hardwood floor, we HAVE to tear up all the
existing hardwood, and that in doing that we would probably destroy the
joists.

I went to the basement and looked at the ceiling, and it doesn't appear
that the hardwood floor upstairs is the same as the ceiling downstairs.
Downstairs as the ceiling, there are wide (around 12") wooden planks that
run diagonally, and the hardwood floor upstairs is thinner planks that
run straight, so it seems that the hardwood floor is nailed either into
subfloor or straight into those planks that comprise the ceiling of the
basement. So why would we be destroying the joists if we tore it up?

Now, I realize that if we DID put down a hardwood floor, we'd need to put
some kind of subflooring down first (maybe about 1/4"?), and that the
room we do would then have a higher floor than surrounding rooms
(assuming we didn't tear up the original floor first), but I don't see
what this guy was saying about how you just can't put hardwood down if
there's hardwood there already. I asked a couple handymen I know
(they're not hardwood floor installers, but they seem pretty savvy about
house stuff overall), and they said they can't imagine what the problem
would be as long as there's subfloor between the old hardwood and the new
hardwood.

Are we all missing something?

Thanks for any help, details, thoughts, etc.