Advice required on oak flooring laying job gone wrong

[MBushy]

Hi, I need some advice please.

I have been laying oak floorboards onto Envoy adhesive underlay. Horror of horrors I've discovered that some of the backing cellophane has not come off cleanly and is trapped between underlay and the boards above it. It makes a 'crinkling' sound when you step on the boards. Luckily I've only done 3/5 of the room and the trapped cellophane is somewhere under the last 4 rows I've laid.

Question is how can I lift these 4 rows to effectively re-lay them? They will have partially adhered to the exposed underlay just to make things more of a challenge. They'll just be tongued into each other though, no skirting board is pinning them down yet - they are genuinely 'floating'. I really don't want to scrap the whole job and start again due to the complicated laying (under door trims and through the doorway continuing onto the landing) I've already sweated over.

Appreciate I'll need to discard the underlay, clean up the boards I lift and use fresh underlay. Any help would be gratefully received. If I can fix this now before going on I'll take that hit, I'm gutted I didn't spot this sooner. Hope you can help.

Many thanks

Mark

 

[topchippyles]

Just needs a softly softly approach really,Sounds like to you to take up the ones not correctly laid and clean the backs of the boards and relay,We have all been there at some point.

 

[Lons]

I've been there having to lift some boards though not due to the release plastic. I can tell you you'll have to use a sharp scraper on the back of the boards as the underlay sticks like s**t to a blanket!

I was able to gently lift the whole length of the room to about 400mm high at the front by putting supports underneath, I had 2 lads to help, then I managed to cut along the joint underneath after measuring distance from above. It wasn't exact and certainly not easy but seemed the best solution at the time for me. 4 boards back might be a bit much for you.

The underlay can be stretched and I tried to do that initially but couldn't manage without causing damage to the top edges as the T&G joints were tight..

Bob

 

[MBushy]

Thanks guys, this is more thought out than my original idea. Think I'll slit the underlay right along the edge of the last row laid to free the floor from the unused remainder of the underlay, lift the last laid board, free that one, then repeat until I work back to where I need to re-start from.

I can then 'park' those boards if need be and start again with other boards (I have enough boards and underlay for another room which I won't get round to til later in the year, anyways).

Appreciate the advice! Cheers, Mark

 

[MBushy]

Pheee-yewww! Someone's looking out for me. Managed to lift and ferret around under the lain boards and fish out the offending backing - it was smaller than I thought. Didn't need to scrap anything and so carried on and finished the room.

That cellophane stuff though is quite brittle, I can see how easy it is to miss a bit, especially if you are doing full width rows. I don't recommend trying to lay too many rows at once on your own.