New flooring/subflooring question

[bignerd]

How do you go about this?
We bought new laminate flooring for our entire main floor.
Main floor consists of kitchen(laminate flooring) and living room (carpet and underlay.)

Kitchen has a subfloor under it to raise it to the height of the carpet and underlay.

We want the laminate to be all one level throughout the living room/kitchen, however all the kitchen cabinets and island sit on top of the subfloor...

Do you cut around the cabinets and remove the subflooring? Or just add subfloor to the side with carpet and raise it all up to the same level?

And how the hell do you get the glued mdf subfloor out if you have to take it out?\

Just looking for the reccomended/best way to go-remove subfloor or add?

[c-macc]

My best advice would be to remove the kitchens k3, even though its the biggest @#%! to remove. Building up more and more layers of flooring is not the right way to do things usually, and will cost you much more.
The best way to remove glued mdf is to use a skill saw to cut a 1 square foot grid into the floor, the same depth as the mdf. and go hard with crowbars and wonderbars and chisels..
There are specific saws to cut up against cabinits, But they tend to be expensive. I usually just break it away as best as i can, and then attack the remainder with a chisel and hammer.
P.m. me if you need an installer, i do that by trade

[topmade]

Well, it would depend on how much space the carpeted area is taking up vs the current laminate. Most houses nowadays has just a small carpet area for the living room and everything else is on laminate so it would make sense to add instead of remove.

[bignerd]

Carpet and Lino are almost even as far as amounts of each in the house.

Problem is, the island in the kitchen has a pony wall that seperates the kitchen from the living room-the "island" cabinets are against the back of this pony wall. Subflooring in the kitchen goes under all the cabinets but is not underneath the pony wall(pulled out dishwasher and checked). Not sure how to deal with this? I am thinking because the kitchen is all fucked up it is easier to add subfloor to the living area where it was lower due to the carpet and just have transitions around the base of the fireplacer(has a tile surround) and at the front door(also will be tile).

The cabinets against the pony wall could come out but not without damaging backsplash, drywall on the pony wall etc...

I assume either way you would have to remove baseboards also.

[barmanjay]

It's easier to lay a matching sub-floor where the carpet once was.

It'll save you a lot of extra work, but it does cost you more in materials (sub floor) vs. nothing but labour to remove the kitchen subfloor.

I've done both ways and prefer laying a matching subfloor hands down.

[bignerd]

Thanks for the advice on this matter, it is a pain in the ass trying to remove the old lino in the kitchen. I think I am going to add sub floor to save me time, the cost may be a bit more but after looking at it, it will be less painfull I hope anyways.

If anyone has any advice on how to quickly remove lino that would be great.

Thanks again

[barmanjay]

if you are putting laminate overtop, i wouldnt bother to remove the old lino

[codetrap]

We had to add subfloor in when we changed the lino over to tile and ripped out the carpeting. It's easy to do. All you may have to do is get some cement type stuff to put under it to fill in the gaps and do any leveling.

I had to use a full bag of the stuff due to the tile.. and I leveled it over a 4 foot wide spread to cover the rise in the floor, and the small gap.

[bignerd]

Originally posted by barmanjay
if you are putting laminate overtop, i wouldnt bother to remove the old lino

The dog chewed up part of our lino(about a 3x6 area) so it is uneven-you can feel it through the underlay for the new laminate flooring so we chose to remove it to have an even floor to start with-it is a pain in the ass.

We are using a metal scraper and a heat gun.

[black_shadow_18]

boiling hot water helps, also cut the line into long narrow strips (about 6 to 8 inches wide) and it comes up like a piece of cake! Also, do not take up that particle board floor. its nearly impossible and will damage the osb subfloor below. just match it throught the rest of the floor and you will be much less miserable in the long run, i guarantee!

[bignerd]

Doesn't the hot water ruin the mdf subfloor? As well when we are done removing lino we want to start laying the new laminate so the floor needs to be dry?