Heard a flooring guy at Home Depot say something about subfloor prep that made me rethink my whole approach

I was grabbing some leveling compound yesterday when this older guy in the aisle told a younger guy that self leveler is just a band-aid for a bad subfloor. He said if you don't fix the actual dips and humps first, you're just wasting money and time. I've done two bathroom floors where the tile cracked after a year and now I'm wondering if that was my problem. Has anyone else had luck with actually screwing down loose plywood instead of just pouring more compound?

2 comments

2 Comments

evangarcia1d agoMost Upvoted

Screwing down the plywood first saved my last floor job big time.

rowanc291d ago

Oh man, that reminds me of a time I was helping my buddy redo his garage floor and we skipped that step. We just glued everything down and figured it'd hold. A month later, we had these weird hollow spots where the plywood started popping up from the moisture. Ended up having to tear half of it out and do it over with screws. That extra trip to the hardware store and a whole Saturday wasted on fixing it was brutal. Now I'm a total convert, I screw down every single sheet if there's any chance of movement.