When a new floor fails early — planks separating, laminate clicking underfoot, carpet rippling, hardwood cupping — the cause is almost never the flooring itself. It's what the flooring was put on. The subfloor is the plywood, OSB or concrete under everything, and it's the part of the job nobody sees once the new floor is down. That's exactly why it gets rushed.
Floating floors like luxury vinyl plank and laminate are the most sensitive. They aren't fastened down; the planks lock to each other and rest on whatever is underneath. If there's a dip, the planks bridge over it and flex every time someone steps there. Over months, that flexing wears out the locking joints and the floor starts to click, gap or peak. Manufacturers specify how flat the subfloor has to be for exactly this reason, and an install that ignores it can void the warranty.
Prep starts after the old floor comes up. We sweep the subfloor clean and check it with a long straightedge to find the high and low spots. Low spots get filled with patch or leveling compound; high spots at seams get sanded or ground down. Squeaks are usually a subfloor panel moving on a joist, and they get screwed down now — once the new floor is on, fixing a squeak means taking it back up.
Then there's moisture. In the Pacific Northwest a lot of homes sit over crawlspaces or on concrete slabs that are never completely dry. Over concrete, floating floors get a vapor barrier. Before hardwood goes in, we check the subfloor's moisture and let the wood acclimate in the house, because wood installed wet or into a damp room will move once the heat comes on.
Older homes deserve a closer look. Houses in Tacoma, Renton, Seattle and older parts of Auburn and Puyallup often have plank subfloors, patched-in sections from past remodels, or soft areas near bathrooms and exterior doors where water has gotten in over the years. We point those out on the estimate rather than covering them up, and we'll show you what we found.
The good news is that prep is rarely the expensive part of a job, and it's the part that decides how long the new floor lasts. Call Floors by Angel at (253) 417-3607 for a free estimate, and we'll tell you what's under your floor before we quote what goes on top of it.