How To Remove Tar Paper From Hardwood Floors

It just would not scrape up.

How to remove tar paper from hardwood floors.

Tar paper is a floor underlayment that was used throughout much of the 20th century. Tar is a substance that is sticky in nature coming from roots and woods which is primarily used on sealing roofing shingles as well as then wooden hulls of ships to prevent them from rotting. In diluted form tar is also used as spice for meat candy flavoring anti dandruff agent and as a component to some cosmetics. The linoleum pulled apart from the tar felt paper that was glued to the wood floor after removing as much of the tar and felt paper with a scrapper i used the wall paper steamer.

You can use the putty knife to scrape the tar paper off sections should come free by hand but there will be areas where you will have to scrape with the knife to cut the paper away from the surface. The tiles come up very easily but the tar paper doesn t. That loosened up the glue and was able to remove the remaining paper with a scrapper. Many homeowners find that they have beautiful wood floors hidden beneath this tar paper.

There are many ways to remove tar stuck on a hardwood floor. If you ever remodel the floor and want to expose the first layer in the future you will need to remove the layer of tar paper off the surface. This is what my completed project looks like. Often placed under linoleum or other resilient flooring products it was designed to act as a moisture barrier over existing wood or cement floors.

One corner of the kitchen didn t get soaked through though and trying to scrape up that tar paper without scraping up the floor was turning out to be extremely tedious and time consuming. I have oak hardwood floors that were covered in the 70 s with vinyl type tiles they laid a type of tar paper over the hardwood flooring. The tiles were then glued to the tar paper. Be careful the floor becomes hot.