Marc AttwellFLOORING, home
Wet cream latex screed poured out across a navy kitchen floor, still glossy before curing.

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Sub floor preparation

Lifting old floors, damp membrane, overboarding and latex screed. It is on the side of Marc's van because it is the part of the job that decides how the finished floor looks in five years.

Everything that goes wrong with a floor starts underneath it.

Lippy boards. A dip by the back door. Old bitumen adhesive left on. A screw head standing an inch proud. None of it looks like much when the room is empty, and all of it will show through a new floor.

Vinyl and LVT are a few millimetres thick and they are stuck down, so they take the shape of whatever is under them. Carpet is more forgiving, right up until the underlay bridges a hollow and the pile wears through in a line. This is not a detail Marc adds on. It is the reason his floors sit flat.

What actually happens before a floor goes down.

A hallway floor part covered in cream levelling compound, patchy where it has been worked into the low spots, with stairs beyond.

  1. Lift and strip

    The old covering comes up and the sub floor gets looked at properly, including whatever adhesive the last fitter left bonded to it.

  2. Check for damp

    If the floor has been wet, a new covering will trap it. A membrane goes down where it is needed rather than where it is convenient.

  3. Fix the boards

    Loose boards screwed, proud fixings punched down, and overboarding where the timber is too far gone to level.

  4. Latex screed

    Poured, floated out and left to cure. It fills the dips and gives one flat, sound surface for the new floor to bond to.

  5. Then, and only then, the floor

    Set out and fitted onto something that will not move.

The bit nobody photographs.

These are all from Marc's own jobs. He posts the prep as often as he posts the finished floor, which tells you where he thinks the work is.

Cream latex screed poured over part of a floor next to bare timber boards, with a trowel resting on the untreated section.
Screed meeting the bare boards
Navy kitchen with a Belfast sink. The old floor covering is coming up and green residue is still bonded to the boards in the corner.
Old covering coming up, green residue still bonded on
Wet cream latex screed poured across a kitchen floor between navy units, still glossy.
Latex still wet across the kitchen
A cured cream latex screed surface running up to a wall, with a trowel and yellow underlay offcut at the edge.
Cured flat and ready
Bright green underlay taped down across a stripped room with alcove shelving and skirting.
Green underlay taped out across a stripped room
Bathroom floor stripped back to a dark, water stained sub floor beside a shower tray.
A bathroom sub floor that had been wet
Tredaire underlay cut to shape in a hallway with exposed brick and black gripper strips at the edges.
New gripper, then underlay
Grey herringbone LVT part laid in a hallway with a bare patch of sub floor still showing and a bucket to one side.
Halfway through, prep still visible

Not sure what is under yours?

Nor is anybody until the old floor comes up. Marc will tell you what he can see when he measures, and what it would take to put right, before you commit to anything.

Book a free measure Call 07580 138443