Polished Floor Boards + Underlay Adhesive = Eek!

So I've bought a house ... my very first house ever! Settlement is tomorrow and I'm so excited I am afraid I'm gonna leave puddles all over the floor!

I noticed that the master wardrobe showed polished floor boards in one of my inspections and I was hoping that it would mean the rest of the house had them underneath all the carpet ... And YES!

However ... the underlay is glued to the beautifully polished floor boards ... On Saturday I am going to play in one discreet corner in the spare room and see with some experimenting - hot water and metho etc ... I've done some random googling and came up with a few answers ... but I really really really REALLY don't want to have to sand and varnish again ... I'm recently single and can't fob off the work to a manly specimen any more and I am somewhat limited by what I can do cause I've got a buggered wrist ...

I know that I'm probably prematurely posting, but I was just wondering if anyone here has any experience with this ... I know it would depend upon the type of glue used etc ... The carpet is probably about 12 years old I think - that's when the alarm was put in so I would guess about the same time.

Or some sort of magic wand would also work if anyone has one of those? Pretty please ... ?

Thanks in advance!

We have sanded the glue and other crap off the floor boards in the past. Using 40 or 60 grit, makes for even more work as you go back over and over and over again with the finer grits to get rid of the scratches.

Only suggestion is continue with your thinking, Rip up the carpet and try in a corner. Kero, Metho, something might work.

Sorry, can't offer a good solution for you.
Cheers
Graeme

The glue might only be in a specific place where the carpet would not tension properly or there was no edge tacking eg inside a wardrobe.

Is the underlay rubber or foam? Unless its foam, over 12 years the ribbing on the rubber will have left marking on the varnish anyway, and where its been wet/damp eg at doorways to wet areas, it will stick and be all icky.

My suggestion would be to pull up a spare room and see how it looks. You might get away with it. If its no good then save up and get the carpets removed and the floors sanded and polished. I recently had a 3br house with hallway, lounge and dining done for $2000 which included removal and disposal of old carpet and underlays.

Oh, good luck with that. We had carpets with adhesive backing (its not just on the edges) over a very rough concrete floor.

Removed it with a flat bladed shovel. Some parts of it were quite easy to remove, some were not.

I'd be trying initially to scrape it off with a plastic paint scraper, see how you go, and then go with the solvents for the residue. As above, try a small area first with the solvents. Some of the glued stuff will come up completely as you just yank off the carpet, so the order is yanking, scraping and then solvents

You could try sugar soap to remove the glue. The trick is to leave it there for 10 or 15 minutes before any rubbing/scraping.

Callipops, there is another thread in this part of the forum where someone was asking for advice on removing cement. Somebody mentioned a product that will remove liquid nails. I bet that stuff whould shift your glue.
Scott

You could try one of the devices used to remove wallpaper glue

Get a pro in. They can scrape the bulk of the glue up with a scraper and then sand the balance off with 24/40 grit.

The good thing for you is that Sydney is the cheapest place in Australia to get your floors done

i had the same problem once. I found it came up easy if you use soapy water and leave it for 10 or 15 mins. It was a while ago now so I can't remember how much I used but I don't think I soaked it.

i used a flat shovel and it came up in shovel wide strips. If you're afraid of damage to the floor try a blunt shovel or large paint scraper.

You will definitely have marks on the floor from the glue anyway I should think.

Good luck.

dont use kero, as its an oil based product and it will soak into the unfinished wood grains and then when you put the polish over the top, it may show through unless 100% of the flooring has the same amount of kero soaked into it.

Ben

We wanted to polish floors that had tiles. The tiles lifted fairly easily but had a glue that looked like concrete. I spent a day scraping as much as I could up. I called the floor sander to ask him if I was wasting my time. He came out and said to wipe metho on. Leave for 10 mins then scrape. SOOO much easier.

I'd try the metho and if it doesn't dissolve it I'd ring your sander and ask him what to use.