September 18, 2017
Removing the tile or wood flooring in your home might seem like it would be an easy enough process to handle on your own. In a perfect world, the floorboards or tiles would simply pop out, making it simple to get rid of the whole floor, and you’d barely break a sweat. But that’s not always the case. Some types of tile and wood floor can be harder to remove than others, and if you start one of these types of removals without any help, you might find that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Before you take on the process of removing the flooring yourself, or hire just anyone to remove it for you, consider some of the risks that you may open yourself up to.
Removing the surface of tile or wood is only the beginning of the process. Once you have removed the flooring material, you also have to get rid of whatever you find underneath. In certain cases, hard wood flooring is stuck to plywood planks, which is then stuck to the concrete subfloor surface. All of this plywood and the glue have to be removed before you can have a contractor come in to place a new flooring surface. Since this glue is thick and meant to be in place for many years, getting it off the concrete surface takes more than hard work. Grinders are the best way to get the surface nice and clean.
In other cases, when tile flooring is pulled up, there can be a thick mortar bed underneath. Mortar is a type of cement that hardens when it dries that you have likely seen many times, holding brick walls together or in building repairs. When placed under a tile floor, mortar helps to seal them to the concrete subfloor and keep them where they were laid. This is especially important if the tile floor includes decorative patterns or is made of heavy materials, like travertine or marble. In those circumstances, the flooring installer may purposely lay the mortar several inches thick to get the tiles to hold.
Finding a thick mortar bed under a tile floor is a homeowner’s worst nightmare for a few reasons:
Another risk of inexperience is the chance of damage to your home. Using brute force to remove flooring can result in dents and dings to the concrete, the trim items nearby and even wall surfaces. Not to mention, if something is damaged during the process, your insurance company is not likely to cover the loss. Even worse, if you hurt yourself or someone else gets hurt during an inexperienced removal, you can open yourself up to liability and medical bills.
Any home renovation process creates some mess, but flooring removal can create more of a mess than usual unless you protect the area. Removing the mortar or thin set can create a lot of dust, and the dust can spread unless you stop it. Once the dust has moved across the home and into the heating and cooling system, it can continue to spread, causing allergies and respiratory problems for your family. A professional flooring removal company like Flooring Removal Services will take steps to minimize the spread of dust and clean up after work is done. Our crews lay plastic sheets to prevent the dust from leaving the work area and spreading all around. We use pulse vacuums and air scrubbers to get every speck of dust out of the home before we leave. These processes help to preserve the indoor air quality and keep most of the dust away from your family.
If you want to have an expert service work on your home, Flooring Removal Services can help. Click here to get a free estimate for carpet, wood or tile flooring removal in Coral Springs.
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