Y’all, I seem to have the worst success in trying to hire out work on our house. I keep trying, but thinks just never seem to quite work out for me. 😀
Tuesday morning, I got up knowing that I had a huge task ahead of me — installing the hardwood flooring in our master bedroom suite. There are two rooms and a foyer that only have plywood subfloor at this point, so they need hardwood flooring. I’ve installed plenty of hardwood flooring in the past, so I know I can do it. I’m capable. I have the tools. But what I lacked was the drive and motivation to get it done. It’s just a whole lot of flooring, and the task seemed pretty daunting to me.
I was also feeling very unsure about the process for a reason I’ll explain later in this post. And because I was having big doubts about the process, I was feeling so unmotivated to jump in and get the project done. Those doubts have been nagging at me for weeks now, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t find the answer to my question about the installation process. But more on that in a minute.
So I decided that this would be the perfect project to hire out. After looking online at local companies and their Google ratings and reviews, I chose a company. Waco isn’t that big, so when it comes to companies that will just install flooring (rather than trying to sell me flooring and having their people install the flooring that I buy from them), I really only found one company that would do it. Thankfully, that company has fantastic reviews. So I called, and the man came out that day (Tuesday) to measure for an estimate. He said he would get back to me that afternoon with the estimate. Unfortunately, I still haven’t heard back from them.
I’m really okay with it, though. The main part that I wanted to hire out is the sanding. Installing the flooring is the easy part. The part I dread the most is the sanding. But I was told that they only do the installation, and I’d have to find someone else to do the sanding and the finishing (or do it myself) because they don’t do that. I was so disappointed to learn that. To me, it doesn’t really seem worth it to hire out a job when they’ll only do the easy part, but I’m still stuck doing the hardest part.
So in the end, I’m really not even upset about the fact that they didn’t get back to me with an estimate. If they can’t do the part I dread the most, and I’d still be stuck doing that part, I might as well do all of it myself. So today is the day. Today is officially flooring day.
There is a lot of flooring to be installed, and it’s so easy to get overwhelmed at having to do all of this myself from start to finish.
But I’m just going to take it one step at a time. As the saying goes, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. This is my elephant. 😀
I have no idea how long this will take, but I’m going to do my best not to drag this out. I’m ready to get to the fun stuff. But again, I have two rooms and a foyer that need flooring.
But the flooring is going to completely change the look of this whole area. That motivates me!
The good thing about having him come out is that I was able to ask that question that has been nagging at me and keeping me from jumping into this flooring project before now. And that question was about underlayment/moisture barrier.
The original hardwood flooring in our house has/had felt paper between the hardwood flooring and the subfloor to act as a barrier. That’s basically the stuff that’s used under shingles on a roof. So a few weeks ago when I started installing the flooring, I started laying down the felt paper. You may recall seeing that in pictures of the foyer from a few weeks ago.
But then I took that felt paper up and wondered if I needed to bypass that step because I remembered that in all of this area that has new subfloor, the contractor added Tyvek under the floor joists, and then added insulation between the floor joists, before installing then new subfloor. They did that on our bathroom floor two years ago when I hired that original contractor to do the work, and he explained that the city now requires that on any remodels dealing with the subfloor. So when we had the subfloor replaced in these areas, they did that in these areas as well.
So my biggest concern was that by adding a layer of felt paper between the subfloor and hardwood flooring, I may be creating that dreaded “moisture barrier sandwich” that can cause big problems. Are y’all aware of the “moisture barrier sandwich” issue?
I learned about this many years ago, back in 2014, when I was remodeling our hallway bathroom. I was ready to do the bathtub surround, and I was researching the best way to waterproof a shower/bathtub surround. I learned that there are two main ways to do it.
The first way is to attach thick plastic sheeting to the wall studs and make sure the plastic sheeting completely seals the area. And then on top of the sheeting, install the concrete board, sealing the seams and the screw holes. And then tile directly on top of the concrete board.
The second main way to do it is to install the concrete board directly to the wall studs and seal the seams and screw holes. And then use a paint-on waterproofing barrier like RedGard or SEMCO Liquid Membrane (my favorite waterproofing membrane) on top of the concrete board. Once that’s dry, you then tile on top of the waterproofing membrane.
When doing the hallway bathroom bathtub surround, I chose the RedGard liquid waterproofing membrane option.
But the key is that you can only choose one option. You can’t do both. Waterproofing isn’t one of those situations where one option must be good, so using both options must be better. Because if you do both — use the plastic sheeting on the studs PLUS add a waterproofing membrane to the concrete board — you’ve created that dreaded “moisture barrier sandwich”, which means that if you happen to have a failure somewhere in that waterproofing membrane, and water happens to get behind the concrete board, it’s stuck there and has no way to evaporate because it’s stuck between the waterproofing membrane and the plastic. And then what you’ve created is the perfect breeding ground for mold. So when it comes to shower surrounds, you only ever waterproof behind the concrete board or on top of the concrete board, but never both.
So this one issue has been nagging me for weeks now. If I have Tyvek under my floor joists, plus felt paper on top of the subfloor, is that creating a moisture barrier sandwich? I’ve googled every search term I could think of to answer my question of whether or not I should use felt paper above the subfloor in this situation, but no matter what I searched, I couldn’t find the answer. And I was so afraid to move forward without knowing with full confidence if I was about to make a huge mistake by using the felt paper.
So when this man — the owner of this decades-old flooring installation company — was here, I explained the situation very clearly, and he repeated it back to me more than once, so I know he understood exactly what I was describing. And since his business is here in Waco where the city now requires the Tyvek under the floor joists, I’m confident that he has seen this many times. So I asked him how they would handle that. Would they install the hardwood flooring directly on the subfloor? Or would they install an underlayment of some sort between the subfloor and hardwood flooring?
He said, “Oh, we would use an underlayment. We would use something like…”, and then he stopped, looked around the room, saw my roll of felt paper leaning against the wall, and pointed to it and said, “…that! We would put that down first.”
So I’ve heard it directly from the local professional who’s been in the business for decades. I breathed such a sigh of relief just having that information confirmed by him. It was so worth putting off starting on the flooring for two days just to have that information from him and the peace of mind it brings knowing that I can move forward with full confidence that I’ll be installing the flooring exactly like a local professional with decades of experience in this area would have done it.
And now with that confidence and that peace of mind, I can get busy on the flooring. I’d still love for someone else to do the sanding for me, but if I can’t find anyone, I’m fine with doing it myself. I dread it, and it’s one of my least favorite things to do, but at least I have experience. 😀 It won’t be my first time, and it probably won’t be my last, either.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
