Spent 3 hours trying to fix a squeaky floor before I found the real problem

I had a hardwood job in a house near Austin last month and one board squeaked like crazy no matter what I did. I tried screwing down from the top and using shims, wasted a good 3 hours. Finally I pulled the board and realized the subfloor had a gap underneath from a poorly cut sheet of 3/4 inch plywood. Has anyone else run into a squeak that turned out to be something totally unexpected below the surface?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryanh773d ago

Wait, the wrong side of the underlayment up? That's wild. How do you even do that by accident?

morgan.joseph3d ago

OH man that is SO frustrating! I feel your pain. I've had a similar thing happen in my own house, not with hardwood but with some laminate I put down in the hallway. I spent an entire Saturday chasing a squeak, pulling up boards, checking the joists, the whole nine yards. Turned out the previous owners had laid the underlayment with the WRONG side up and the seam was just rubbing on the tongue of the next plank. Three hours of my life I'll never get back. It's crazy how the real problem is always something you'd NEVER think to check. You start troubleshooting the obvious stuff and it just leads you in circles.