Saturday night I walked near our kitchen sink and thought to myself, "Hmmm...I don't remember the floor being this...squishy." When I pushed down on the LVP (or whatever this flooring is), water oozed up from the cracks between the planks.
I pried off the quarter-round and started pulling up flooring. Standing water underneath...not a good sign (see picture 1). Removed flooring until I found the edges of the water (see picture 2), ran a fan and dehumidifier on it to dry it. Thought the issue was maybe the dishwasher, so I ran a quick wash to observe what happened in real time. After ~20 minutes, I could see water starting to seep in again mostly along the cracks between the original hardwood floorboards (see picture 3), so I canceled the dishwasher, assuming that was the culprit. However, when my daughter was hand-washing dishes in the sink, we saw some evidence of water starting to come up through the floor at that point as well. Likely a plumbing issue that we'll need to address first.
The LVP in the kitchen was placed on top of older hardwood, which is on top of some sort of plank subfloor (it's an old house...from the basement the subfloor boards look like they're ~3" wide, maybe?). There's evidence in the basement that water was getting all the way to the joists.
This is a flooring subreddit, so here are my questions for y'all:
- How likely is it that we have to replace everything all the way down to the joists?
- If we do need to redo the joists and subfloor, can I just fill in the vertical gap between the joists and the existing flooring in the rest of the kitchen with thicker OSB, or does it need to be layered? For example, if the original on top off the joists is 1/2" plank subfloor (no idea what it's actually called...hope that makes sense) + 1/4" hardwood flooring, in the repair area can we just do 3/4" OSB?
- For flooring, would you recommend replacing the LVP that I pulled out with new planks (whichever previous owner redid the kitchen saved the extra flooring in the garage), or can I use the salvaged ones if I dried them out? Or do I need to redo the whole kitchen anew?
- Is any of this DIYable?
- What would you expect it would cost to hire someone in the worst-case scenario, let's say needing to replace 6 joists + ~50 sqft of subfloor and LVP. Obviously estimates could vary widely; I'm just looking for a ballpark to test quotes against. We live in a fairly low cost-of-living area (a small town in South Dakota), but that also often means we have limited options for builders/contractors.
I appreciate anyone who has thoughts/advice/recommendations/answers for us! We are weary of home ownership after just 3 years of it...looking forward to getting back to renting as soon as we can. 😆