Rough Subfloor Prep

Here at MP Global we take pride in our products and we listen to feedback from our customers closely. A customer wrote this article based on an experience they had with our QuietWalk Luxury Vinyl Underlayment. We noticed their article and reached out to them asking if we could feature it on our blog page. This is the experience you can expect to have with our products.

Removing the old carpet

As a self-proclaimed handyman, I’m often called upon by many family members to help them “get started” on their do-it-yourself projects.  The latest was my sister’s basement flooring.  When she asked me to help her husband install some of the new vinyl plank flooring, I said “No problem, I’ve done it before”.  Little did I know what lay below her ragged carpet.

We cut the old carpet into sections and pulled it out of the house, then started in on removing the carpet pad . . . not so easy.  The old pad was glued to the concrete around the room perimeter and at the seams. Remnants of the pad stayed stuck to the floor, so we sharpened up our scrapers and removed what we could. In addition, the tack strip around the perimeter also had to go. There were nails holding them to the concrete. As we pried them up, chips and chunks of the cement came up with them

Uneven subfloor

What we thought would be a nice, smooth concrete subfloor, was now a rough surface that would surely telegraph through to the face of the flooring. The vinyl planks had a thin pre-attached backing, but it wasn’t enough to absorb the protrusions and dips on the floor.

QuietWalk underlayment for luxury vinyl floors

We elected to purchase an underlayment called “QuietWalk LV” at the local Menards store.  I’ve used that well-known brand of underlayment with laminate floors in the past, but this one was specifically branded with an “LV” for Luxury Vinyl floors. We rolled the underlayment out with the vapor barrier facing up, and joined the seams with the built-in lip and tape system. Immediately I sensed that the fibrous pad would do a good job of covering up the imperfections of the subfloor, and the attached vapor barrier could also protect the flooring from any of the leftover nasty adhesives from the old carpet pad.

Conclusion

The results were great! The QuietWalk LV underlayment allowed the vinyl planks to lay flat with no hint of the rough subfloor we had covered up, and the cost was much more reasonable than renting equipment to smooth the surface. It made for happy customers.

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