How to cut out wood floor to expose subfloor?

Question

I'm renovating my bathroom which currently has wood floors. I need to cut the wood floors from just this room to expose the subfloor..so I can lay underlayment for tile. How do you cut just the finished wood floor without damaging subfloor (wooden planks)? Particularly very tight and close to the walls? Please help

you can't just pry it up becasue the wood floors go into the next room under the walls...it needs to be cut out of just one room.

Answer 1

Sounds like you need to find some way to accurately find out the depth of the flooring, first. Can you pry or chip enough of one board away to do that? Then you can set your blade depth on a circular saw to that depth and cut around the edge of the room. Pop out the boards. Then rout out the remaining wood up to the edges. Tedious, but can't think of an easier way offhand, sorry. Will do some night-thinking (solve my hardest ones that way) and contact if I get brainstorm. Good luck!

mjboog2 is right about the baseboard and such, unless this is an older house, where the bathroom may have been partitioned off from a larger room after the floor was already installed over the full room?

Answer 2

Well, first off, if it were me, I would go to the furthest piece from the next room, and get a saw and adjust it to 1/4" and cut a small square, and see if I hit the next layer of flooring.
(Most sub floors will be a different color, mainly because they havent been painted and you will be able to tell if you hit "new wood", that isnt part of the flooring you are working on)...

If I didnt hit the "old subfloor", then I would adjust my saw down in 1/8th increments. (You can measure how far the saw blade is out of the "shoe", with a straight ruler, assuming your using a circular saw-->which I am alluding to, that you use :)...

When you finally hit the sub floor, and get a pry bar and lever the old floor up from it, and are certain that you 'have' the subfloor, then you can go an take the circular saw and slice around the opening to the other room, and cut the floor from that, thus seperating the two rooms.....(now, your not going to be able to cut all the way, so when you draw your line at the door, you will have to take a reguar saw, and where you "cant" get with the circular saw, start to go along the line and work your way down until you hit sub floor).

I wish you well..

Jesse

Answer 3

If it is a true wood floor than all you need is a flatbar, pry out piece by piece, make sure if there even is a subfloor not to pull that up too. My dad does this for a living and have been involved in every type of floor from five layers to putting in a whole new subfloor.

Answer 4

normally the floor covering is not installed before the walls go up, so it shouldn't go under the wall, but only under the baseboards. (Unless the wall was added on at a later date to split a larger room and create a bathroom). You should be able to pull up the baseboards and use a prybar from there. Otherwise, I don't know of any special power tools to do the job, but you could use a dremel with a large cutting disk (large enough for you to lay the dremel on the floor and the disk reach through the "1st layer"). You would have to be very careful to keep the dremel steady. The newer dremel models should be strong enough for a job like this.

Answer 5

if the planks are running perpendicular to the bathroom doorway, you will need to draw a straight line where you want it to end and use something like a Fein tool to cut close to the ends without damaging the doorjambs or other molding.
Then you can cut down the center of one of the planks in the middle of the room and you should be able to remove the two halves without much trouble. This will give you enough room to get under the rest of the planks with a pry bar.

Answer 6

If you know the depth of the wood, you can set a circular saw to that depth and cut with it. In areas you can't reach with the circular saw, you'll have to use a hammer and chisel.

Answer 7

buy a large thick rug? or you could rip up the flooring and install quiet type underlayment