Pulled up carpet to find 5 8 mdf underlayment over 1 2 plywood subfloor with some low spots that are out of spec for the laminate flooring.
Level subfloor with roofing felt.
Flip the piece of felt over so it s not curling up at the ends.
I was going to use roofing felt to even it out and then brad nail down luan over this.
Easy way to level floor before hardwood floor installation using cork and shaving with a https amzn to 2ulh1ov makita planer https amzn to 2wqhfra level.
There is nothing wrong with using roofing paper or even shingles my favorite if there is a floor slight out of level.
Determine and mark high and low spots across the floor.
Set a strategy for filling in low spots to even out the floor.
It caused a dip in the subfloor it levels out near the wall so the dip is say 4 feet wide or so.
Floor leveler is an option too but i usually use floor leveler for floating floors and shim traditional hardwood with shingles.
Sanding the subfloor can remove minor swells or high spots in the wood but any low spots in the floor must be filled in order to level the plywood.
With a single shingle in the deepest part of this leveling project the floorwright taper back with 30 pound roofing felt and stanley fatmax tack hammer util.
Check how level your floor is as you work to make sure you re not creating new dips and high points.
Roll out a course of roofing felt on the floor alongside the wall where you want the flooring courses to start.
Neither 15 felt nor red rosin paper are vapor barriers.
The house shifted and there is one floor joist that is a bit higher than the others.
Cut the felt at the end against the perpendicular wall by laying a level across the width of it and running a utility knife along the level.
If the level of your floor is still slightly off after you ve applied the plywood you can use a layer of roofing felt to even out the floor before you install your flooring.
The reason for this is leveler sometimes has issues with staples or nails going through it.
Fill in low.
The floor doesn t have to be level it has to.
The purpose of these membranes is to control dust pentration more important when subfloors were boards rather than plywood to create a slip plane to allow for differential expansion and to cushion the interface to minimize squeaks.
Their purpose is not to keep subfloor moisture from the flooring.
I am installing a laminate with a pre attached pad on a plywood subfloor.
We did this two ways first by dragging our 8 foot level.