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How To Lay Hardwood On Top of Tile

When you purchase a new home there may be a number of things you want to renovate. Among the top of the list these days, is adding a beautiful hardwood floor. This look offers beauty, value, and extra life. But there are several things to consider when installing hardwood.  Depending on the amount of time you have, you may want to try to get rid of the tile... but this isn't always plausbile or possible, so here is the best way to lay hard wood over tile.

• Remove Any Obstacles

Remove any obstacles such as baseboards so you can slide the hardwood underneath, and replace the base boards at the appropriate hidth. Much of the hardwood floorboards, such as clickwood or engineered are approximately 3/8″ high, and with an extra 1/8″ for the pad underneath, you’ll want to allow for about a 1/”2 gap between the bottom of the base boards and the top floor, prior to laying your hardwood surface.

• Level the Surface (Remove The Tile if Possible)

Get ready for some back breaking grueling work. Before you begin this project, make sure you’ve got plenty of patience in store, otherwise you’ll end up walking out half way through or doing the project wrong.
To lay hardwood down, you will want your surface to be as smooth as possible. If you have any drops that are close to a 1/8″ drop in the surface of your floor, it may cuase damage to your hardwood, or at the least it will creak and crack as you walk over the finished hardwood surface. Consider this – if the plan is 3 inches wide and there is an uneven surface underneath, it will teeter-totter depending on which side of the board you step on. That teeter-totter motion cause motion which will create sounds and wear your hardwood down quickly.

Divots left by the sledge hammer in tile which lies on concrete.

To level the surface the best idea is to get rid of the tile, depending on how easy that is. If the tile is installed on concrete, this may be more difficult. If it was laid in an area such as the upstairs over floorboards, this may prove easier. The reason being, you’re going to have to break the tile with a sledge hammer, and the surface underneath will need to be able to bend with the force of the sledge hammer so the tile can crack. Otherwise, you may just end up putting small divots into the tile and not actually break anything, as show with the picture on the right. The desired effect is to have long breaks up and down the tile which can be pried up. Place a spare towel over the tile as you hit it with the sledge hammer to avoid any flying tile shards

Leveling Tile in Preparation for Hardwood

If you are unable to remove the tile, let some leveling around the uneven portions of the tile, once you have leveled the surface (as pictured on the left) lay an 1/8″ foam pad which you will act as an additional leveling agent for your floor. Even though the tile absorbs water which may come from beneath your surface, this foam pad acts as an extra water barrier from moisture below.

• Lay The Hardwood

At this point it’s your job to put the hardwood down. Cut to size, shape where necessary, and you should be done in a matter of just a few hours! Good luck!

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My name is Kirk Salisbury and I am a do-it-yourself home repairman. The tips above worked for me, and I hope they work for you. I also design websites which focus on real estate around the country so I can help people find Washington DC Homes, Charleston Real Estate, or Irvine CA Foreclosures

 

Tips on Shopping For Homeowners Insurance

http://mcgrawrealtygroup.com/2011/12/shopping-for-homeowners-insurance/

South Bay California Foreclosure Listings

The South Bay area of California Is Expensive. Due to its prime location and mild climate people want to live there. Real Estate in the South Bay is always going to be expensive. One way to get a better deal on a peace of real estate in the South Bay is by purchasing a Foreclosures: Here are some links that will help you to find foreclosure listings in these individual cities in the South Bay area:

• Los Angeles CA Foreclosures
• El Segundo Foreclosures
• Gardena Foreclosures
• Hawthorne California Foreclosures
• Hermosa Beach Foreclosures
• Inglewood Foreclosues
• Manhattan Beach Foreclosures
• Redondo Beach Foreclosures
• San Pedro Foreclosures
• Torrance Foreclosures

Purchasing Foreclosures can help you find bargains, but it can also be tricky. It is always recommended that one use a real estate agent when buying foreclosure homes in California.

Foreclosures in Cape Coral/Fort Myer

Some of the foreclosures in Cape Coral in FL are an absolutely fantastic deal. If you are looking for a beautiful home in Cape Coral, and want to spend less than what you would if you bought a home that was for sale by owner, then check all of these out.
They can be viewed at Cape Coral Foreclosures or Fort Myer Foreclosures. These homes are a great deal because they are actually in recovery from a major foreclosure crisis. There aren't many foreclosures left, so prices on these will begin to rise soon.

The Truth About Foreclosures

We all know that the foreclosure problem in the country and quiet serious right now. There are actually thousands of home owners that are underwater and they owe far more than their homes could ever sell them.

Many of these homeowners have come to the conclusion that giving up their home is a better financial decision than making payments until real estate values recover. Numerous "strategic defaulters" now can afford to buy mortgage payments.

With the way the foreclosure process works, it normally takes at-least 8 months of missed payments before the bank will actually finalize the foreclosure and repossess a house. With the huge number of foreclosures, some banks are literally taking years to initiate foreclosure auctions. They don't want to add the losses to the books and so are postponing foreclosures as long as possible.

Underwater homeowners can not only eliminate thousands in debt by being foreclosed on, but with way the system works, can also save money by not making home payments for many months.

Providing what is known as "stealth stimulus is the flaw in the foreclosure process.” People who are living rent free in homes undergoing foreclosure, have a lot of extra cash, and most of this is helping the overall economy by being spent.

To be specific, some owners of underwater homes listed in the Boston MA MLS Listings are actually making money off of the foreclosure process by renting out their homes that they aren't making payments on.

Foreclosure was meant as a way to protect banks from irresponsible borrowers by using the real estate as collateral. Foreclosures are providing the opposite effect because of the the current real estate market, and unscrupulous lending practices that occurred during the housing boom. Undergoing through a foreclosure process can literally provide financial benefits to the borrower while transferring to the bank.

Strategic defaulting provides huge financial relief to insolvent borrowers but somehow might be unethical in other ways. Because of the slow foreclosure process that stimulates buyers in today's slow economy to give out extra cash to people who need money for housing repayments.

Housing Boom Leaves Salt Lake Real Estate In Decline

The housing boom was remarkable for real estate agents, and some home owners. What happened was home values escalated and the people who sold at the right time made money effortlessly. But, those boom days are long gone, and the reality of the Real Estate in Salt Lake Utah market is one of decline. Nearly everyone now might have wished that the housing boom never happened.

If market conditions remained steady and constant, where would home sales and prices be? If they increased by exactly 2% each year, this is where annual home sales in Salt Lake City would be. If this were the case, we would have had about 4,750 single family home sales this year. This is two times the original home sales we'll see that are probably aroudn 2,400.

The real estate market in Salt Lake has been going up and down. Because of economic recovery and home buyer's tax credit, it is still considered feeble than the average rates. For buyers, this is a an opportunity to take advantage of the low prices. This is the best time to deal with properties for investors, but they have to be careful for competition is growing. For sellers, it is best to be patient because this is still the buyer’s market.

Compared with home price averages from 1998-2001, if Salt Lake home prices increased by exactly 3% every year, they would still be too high. The yellow and red lines show what “average” home values would be, while the blue and green lines represent the median values. Under this model, average home prices in 2007 were about 28% too high. This year they are still nearly 12% above the turn of the century adjusted for inflation levels.

The SLC Real Estate market has come down a long ways over the past three years, but with the way things are looking, it looks like SLC Homes will see further price declines over the next year.