Hi all,
So i'm two weekends in to my 3/4" natural Red Oak nail down whole house project. Having just bought the house a few months ago, this project has really become a great opportunity to start making a mess and really discovering all of the great little things that are wrong with my house (ie. having to replace 2 bottom plates that were turned to cardboard by termites).
Yesterday I spent all evening pulling up carpet in one of the bedrooms and ran across what might be an issue. Being built in the late 60's the house has some interesting structural elements like a platform for a bed in the room i'm working on. Again, I was pulling up carpet in that room and maybe 2ft from where that platform begins I noticed that the sub-floor is bowed up along the entire run of one long seam (basically wall to wall). The sub-floor looks to be tongue and groove but in this one area the seams have pulled apart bit and it bows up (although there really isn't any movement to speak of if you walk across it).
If one were to want to address this, is it more of an aesthetic decision or is this going to cause me grief down the line after my floors are in? Aesthetically speaking i think it's 50/50, i mean i never noticed it when the carpet was there, but of course that had an inch of soft padding between it and my foot. If it were right against a wall or something I would probably just forget about it, but this is sort of front and center in a room and if there is a noticeable bow in the flooring it's going to suck. I'm especially considerate of this because the seam in the sub-floor runs the same directions as the seams in my Red Oak. I'm a little concerned about what might happen if those seams end up falling on top of each other.
On a side note, it's funny to pull stuff up and see how people tried to address things before you came along. At some point someone saw this and rather than pulling up the sub floor and addressing it, they dropped in a circular saw and tried to make a parallel relief cut about a foot away from the bow.
Thanks everyone for any advice you can provide!
So i'm two weekends in to my 3/4" natural Red Oak nail down whole house project. Having just bought the house a few months ago, this project has really become a great opportunity to start making a mess and really discovering all of the great little things that are wrong with my house (ie. having to replace 2 bottom plates that were turned to cardboard by termites).
Yesterday I spent all evening pulling up carpet in one of the bedrooms and ran across what might be an issue. Being built in the late 60's the house has some interesting structural elements like a platform for a bed in the room i'm working on. Again, I was pulling up carpet in that room and maybe 2ft from where that platform begins I noticed that the sub-floor is bowed up along the entire run of one long seam (basically wall to wall). The sub-floor looks to be tongue and groove but in this one area the seams have pulled apart bit and it bows up (although there really isn't any movement to speak of if you walk across it).
If one were to want to address this, is it more of an aesthetic decision or is this going to cause me grief down the line after my floors are in? Aesthetically speaking i think it's 50/50, i mean i never noticed it when the carpet was there, but of course that had an inch of soft padding between it and my foot. If it were right against a wall or something I would probably just forget about it, but this is sort of front and center in a room and if there is a noticeable bow in the flooring it's going to suck. I'm especially considerate of this because the seam in the sub-floor runs the same directions as the seams in my Red Oak. I'm a little concerned about what might happen if those seams end up falling on top of each other.
On a side note, it's funny to pull stuff up and see how people tried to address things before you came along. At some point someone saw this and rather than pulling up the sub floor and addressing it, they dropped in a circular saw and tried to make a parallel relief cut about a foot away from the bow.
Thanks everyone for any advice you can provide!