Hardwood Flooring Nightmare

[Tim B]

Upon exposing oak floors I found the old carpet pad has completely broken down and sticks like glue to the oak. Used a long handled scrapper - but that is very slow and gouging the floor.

Anyone have an idea how to remove this padding - refinisher says the sticky padding will gum up the sand paper and his machine.

Can anyone help me out of this sticky situation?

[Matt Kearney]

Hi Tim,

We've refinished some pretty nasty floors in a couple of our rehabs. One in particular had some really heavy glue/flooring adhesive all over it. My hardwood guy just grinds it out using a very rough, low grit sandpaper.

I would get a few more refinishers to look at it. I'm sure one of them would be willing to sand it out for you.