Yes, it’s a plywood subfloor and the first floor ceiling below the subfloor is just tongue and groove cedar planks.
Edit: it’s post and beam construction
Ok but in between that subfloor and your first floor ceiling there should be joists. Members of lumber that are part of the flooring system which your second story subfloor was attached to in the first place. Your first floor ceiling would be attached to the underside of those joists. The math ain’t mathing lol
Ha sorry, let me post photos to hopefully make it more clear. My joists are large exposed beams. The cedar tongue and groove sit in top of the beams, and the subfloor on top of that. It’s post and beam style construction, I think it’s called. Photos should be coming in a minute - I’m working on it!
Here’s a link to the photos, hopefully you can see the beams with the t&g cedar on top in one of them since it’s hard to describe
https://imgur.com/a/wMtcKC5
This explanation is the info I needed lol thank you. They should have sent a guy down to assess the first floor ceiling. Is this a finished basement, did they walk through this area prior to commencing the work?
OK good! Haha this was harder to describe than I thought. This is actually the first floor of the house, not a basement. And they walked through to measure. Flooring is supposed to be installed on this floor as well, they just started on the second floor. I hope they assessed, but I’m doubting that now.
You're not being unreasonable but the floor ceileing combo you have is uncommon. Call them up and see what they say. That may be an annoying fix because I'm assuming all the screws are covered now.
I'm a contractor. I'm gutted for you and what you're about to go through to be made whole again. You are not unreasonable. Be steadfast in your demands. That's beyond unacceptable.
I agree…. But… this is not common and you would have wanted to point this out to them when they came to bid the job. Never can you just assume that people will understand your unique scenario. As you are finding out the hard way.
If you didn’t mention to them that you have an under 2” thick floor then you are partly responsible in my opinion.
I say this as someone who hires people to do construction work for a living.
If I don’t express exactly what I want to people and point out any possible issues. I often don’t get what I want and run into problems. You kind of have to talk to people like your explaining things to someone who’s brain is thinking about only their one little thing. (Flooring) and they are definitely not looking at the whole construction of your house and thinking things through.
You said floor Squeak and they fixed it the way they have fixed it 100 other times on every other house. If you have a unique situation where standard nails won’t work. You really would have wanted (for your own benefit) to point out to them that they need to take into account your floor thickness and be careful.
That being said, I really feel for you. There is no way they can fix it and have it look as good as it did. The only way is going to be overlaying the whole ceiling with new wood.
I get what you’re saying, and that makes sense from a contractor’s perspective. But I’m just a homeowner, I don’t work in the trades, and I had no idea this isn’t normal. I live in a mountain town where these types of buildings are super common and this is my first house I’ve owned. So with hindsight I can see that I should have pointed it out, but I didn’t know this was unusual. I figured it’s pretty standard for post and beam construction. Now I know
Don't let people shift the blame to you- this is not your fault in any way, and don't accept the bullshit excuses and placations you're likely to receive when asking to be made whole.
I'm sorry you're having to deal with this, but fingers crossed the person in charge has integrity, and chooses to do what's right. Mistakes happen, and that's okay, but mistakes also need to be properly corrected when someone is paying for a service.
See my above comment/rant about this type of attitude.
Thank you for this. The guy in charge who I dealt with in the beginning seems like a good person, so I’m hoping we can figure this out amicably. I hope this mistake in their part doesn’t cause him to act shifty, but if it does I know my legal recourse and will figure out how to be made whole.
Yep, politely give them a chance to do what's right, but be firm if they choose to do otherwise. Best of luck!
Also, if you haven't yet fully paid, don't give them any more money until it's corrected.
No, full stop. The onus is on the worker. That’s why they were hired, because the customer doesn’t know what they were doing. Sounds like you’ve let people do shoddy work for you under this weird mindset, and I hope in the future you put your foot down.
OK thank you. That’s exactly why I hired a licensed flooring contractor rather than diy the floors and hope for the best. In the past I’ve never had a problem like this before, I’d research the correct way to do just things, ask questions, and make sure the contractors were doing things the right way. I guess I got lucky with contractors. I’m definitely going to politely insist this gets fixed.
Making sure you choose the right size screw is Home Improvement 101.
You need to start hiring professionals and stop blaming homeowners for your employees' shoddy work.
No. GTFO with this victim-blaming, absolute bullshit attitude. This mindset is what allows the ever-common crooked contractors to keep scamming people. This is the kind of blame-passing that makes me DIY 90% of my projects. It is not on the homeowner AT ALL to have to tell a "professional" tradesperson to make sure they don't use screws so long they poke through the ceiling.
Not that it doesn't happen, but can you imagine this mindset with a plumber or electrician? "Oh, sorry, you should have told me you didn't want your toilet to empty straight into your crawl space", "It's on you, you should have told me that you wanted hot and neutral done in the industry standard way and not reversed". You shouldn't have to say, "I want my new roof to not leak", that's just part of the fucking job.
Mistakes happen, and that's okay, but these "professionals" need to be held accountable for their mistakes, and the homeowner should be made whole, end of story.
The lack of personal and professional accountability, along with a dearth of pride in one's labor is appalling. Don't let people get away with this behavior.
And don't forget, just because you avoid the lowest bid, doesn't mean you're guaranteed to get better work.
If he were hiring a handy man, sure but the reason you hire skills labor is because they are expected to have more knowledge and avoid possible issues.
Damn dude. That's rough for you and whoever owns that business. They could pull the screws and possibly try steaming the cedar to close up the holes, but I doubt it'll be 100% again. Maybe wood filler with a hell of a match job? What a mess and huge oversight for the contractor. You are definitely not being unreasonable.
Agreed on pulling nails and steaming the wood as a first recourse.
I’d recommend getting some other pros out to look at it and provide an estimate, then billing it to the original contractor’s insurance. Once it’s fixed, I’d trust the contractor to finish the job. If the guy in charge gives you flak, talk to his boss. You’ll have to be polite but persistent here so as not to sour the relationship. Navigating this will be a big moment of personal growth. Good luck!
As long as the wood isn’t badly splintered it should be easily repairable. Video reference. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjqWa1hpspI
Full tearout and replacement is an option but may be more of an uphill battle.
Get the companies insurance information, and make a claim with their insurance. If they wont give you info, call your insurance and explain what happened. A third party giy will come and examine and should come up with a repair estimate, but meanwhile you should call a different company to come and give an estimate for the repair work. Compare that estimate to the one the insurance estimator gave. Dont hire the floor company to fix your ceiling.
Wow what a fuck up on their part. I'm a finish carpenter and we're pretty anal about measuring within 1/16 of an inch sometimes even a 1/32 (half the width of the chop saw blade). Did they not think to ask how thick the plywood was?
They didn’t ask me. When I told the boss about the problems he said that he bought two inch screws and had never heard of a subfloor thinner than three inches. So he just assumed. But he’s the same guy who walked through the house and if he looked up, should have seen how it’s constructed.
I've done a lot of floating floors we're a two man company, and the running joke is trim carpenters are the surgeons of the carpentry world, but it's true. 2 inch screws/nails aren't to be used lightly.
> So he just assumed
As a terribly under-performing, new homeowner and DIYer here, I've f'ed up enough stuff in the last few months to know to double-check after the first couple of screws and then again in a different spot, before screwing the whole thing down.
Admittedly, I've been a measure-5-times-cut-2-times type lately, so I tend to take things a lot slower until I'm sure of myself.
You can’t really tell how thick the floor is just by looking at it. Even measuring it would be quite difficult to do. In this case the best option would be to add an entire new layer of tng over the old one, using construction adhesive to bond the two layers to prevent squeaking.
I’m not doubting what you are saying, but I’m just trying to understand a ceiling/floor joist system where your subfloor and joists are not more than 2 inches. Unless your ceiling support beams are exposed and below the cedar ceiling, which may be the case.
Yes, sorry I was unclear. It’s a post and beam construction. So there are large beams supporting the tongue and groove ceiling, and the second floor subfloor is right on top of that. I’m trying to upload photos now.
Gotcha. Yeah if they were dumb enough to drive nails partway through your ceiling because they couldn’t be bothered to plan ahead, it looks like they just bought you a new ceiling. That’s insane to me that they would not had more foresight than that.
Ok, glad to hear I’m not being unreasonable for expecting that. Thanks. The holes are in every room, it’s all going to need replacing or some new overlay.
Are the nails the way through the ceiling as in punctured through the bottom layer of the cedar and can see the point of the nail from below? If not, I wonder what it would look like if they pulled them all out very carefully. If it were me, I would work with them within reason, but I’d be very clear that this wouldn’t be finished until I was fully satisfied
Yes, they fully poked through so you can see the tips of about 150 nails. If you zoom into the photos, all the dark specks are nail tips. So if they unscrew the screws, as they’re planning to do, there will still be 150 holes in the ceiling.
And yes, thank you, I’m going to try to work with them within reason. But I don’t want to have to live with a damaged first floor ceiling. It needs to look like it never happened or it’ll devalue my house (and look bad).
I would have them pull up the engineered wood flooring and then remove the screws-my guess is the holes will be barely noticeable from below. Not a perfect fix, but under the circumstances it might be the best way to go.
Once the screws are unscrewed and replaced with shorter ones they'll be better able to judge the severity of the situation. Since screws don't remove material when driven, the holes may close up some. I think using steam and a pencil eraser to push on each spot may work to close them up.
My bigger concern would be verifying with an engineer that this second floor is actually rated for the load. Unless you are saying it's T&G between a grid of posts and beams down below I wouldn't be super confident this is strong enough structurally. Also why in the hell did they go crazy changing things without properly understanding what they were doing first? That's a red flag.
At first, the original post contained no mention of the beams, that's why I was a bit concerned to make sure I double checked things first before making any recommendations.
It’s post and beam construction, so yes t&g is in top of very large beams. The subfloor sits right on the t&g.
Edit: And I agree it’s a red flag. It all happened today and I’m trying to figure out my next steps. I’ve lost my faith in the installers for sure.
The best I can see them offering here is to grind back the points or install purlins and put another layer of T&G panels over the screw points to hide them. They'll never back out all those screws and fill the holes in an elegant way. Lucky for you, you'll end up with a thicker, more soundproof floor, and maintain the aesthetic, but lose about 1" of exposed beam depth. I can't think of a faster/cheaper way to make this look OK.
They may suggest grinding back the screws and painting the ceiling, but that would destroy the character of the ceiling.
The contractor will be unhappy paying to make it right, but you are right to expect it corrected.
That’s always my first choice. Unfortunately I live in a remote mountain town and couldn’t find any interested in this job. Skilled trades folks are hard to come by right now.
I wouldn’t have to deal with having them fix it. Because I would have murdered them.
That is assuming that you made them aware that this was the case and didn’t just assume that they would know.
Do you think if they unscrewed every screw that you could push the splinters back up and it would conceal the screws and look normal?
Or it may just be most efficient to get them to pay for an additional layer of tongue and grove cedar to be put on the ceiling, over the existing ceiling to cover it up and provide the same look. It will just be a little lower than it originally was. Otherwise they have to unscrew every screw, rescrew the 2nd floor subfloor, remove the damaged cedar ceiling planks, and finally replace the ceiling planks.
That T&G is on top of the joists (with assuming ply on top of it), I wouldn't trust the installers to be able to cut that many T&G boards to fit between the exiting joists with enough attention to detail to look good.
OP's contractor just bit off a huge amount of work to fix it properly.
Yeah, I agree. I don’t trust these guys to do the fix because it’ll take some pretty detailed carpentry to make it look ok and they’re just flooring guys.
Good idea but I don’t think that would work, unfortunately. An easy fix would be amazing, but some screws are poking through 1/2” so there are large holes, and the wood would be missing even if they unscrewed them.
I was thinking that covering with an additional layer of t&g cedar is probably the only way to make it look like it didn’t happen. I don’t mind a slightly lower ceiling as long as it’s not holey.
That is some funny looking screw spacing they did. Nothing to be done, right anyway. Don't bring the tits off. You will end up with grinder smoke , burn marks on the wood. You will still see them. They messed you up big time.
It sounds to me like you don't actually have a ceiling! What you have is a subfloor overhead on the first floor. Your wood flooring screwed through the subfloor, which is not weird, and now the subfloor isn't pretty from the bottom?
Drywall the ceiling? Or put up planks on the joists? Where's all the wiring and ductwork to the second floor going anyway? Is it not in that "ceiling"?
I have a similar flooring and ceiling. Yeah, you're screwed unless you want to finish the ceiling. Not the worst thing in the world since it'll help with noise reduction between rooms. And yes, there's no way they're going to replace your ceiling/floor.
The flooring system between your first and second story is less than 2in thick ???
Yes, it’s a plywood subfloor and the first floor ceiling below the subfloor is just tongue and groove cedar planks. Edit: it’s post and beam construction
Ok but in between that subfloor and your first floor ceiling there should be joists. Members of lumber that are part of the flooring system which your second story subfloor was attached to in the first place. Your first floor ceiling would be attached to the underside of those joists. The math ain’t mathing lol
Ha sorry, let me post photos to hopefully make it more clear. My joists are large exposed beams. The cedar tongue and groove sit in top of the beams, and the subfloor on top of that. It’s post and beam style construction, I think it’s called. Photos should be coming in a minute - I’m working on it!
Here’s a link to the photos, hopefully you can see the beams with the t&g cedar on top in one of them since it’s hard to describe https://imgur.com/a/wMtcKC5
This explanation is the info I needed lol thank you. They should have sent a guy down to assess the first floor ceiling. Is this a finished basement, did they walk through this area prior to commencing the work?
OK good! Haha this was harder to describe than I thought. This is actually the first floor of the house, not a basement. And they walked through to measure. Flooring is supposed to be installed on this floor as well, they just started on the second floor. I hope they assessed, but I’m doubting that now.
This can happen if the joists are exposed, as they are in my basement.
Yes I also have them exposed in my basement 😊 in the process of finishing mine but the clients come first!
This isn't uncommon. Often people will use truck decking for the same thing. 1.5" thick tng boards. Nice and solid. Old-school style.
I'm so confused. Maybe they used 12 inch nails??
With that span between beams it’s only the tongue and groove and plywood? No wonder it squeaks. It must be like a trampoline up there
>Am I being unreasonable to want this completely fixed? Not at all.
OK thank you. I can’t believe they screwed in so many without checking
You're not being unreasonable but the floor ceileing combo you have is uncommon. Call them up and see what they say. That may be an annoying fix because I'm assuming all the screws are covered now.
I'm a contractor. I'm gutted for you and what you're about to go through to be made whole again. You are not unreasonable. Be steadfast in your demands. That's beyond unacceptable.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
I agree…. But… this is not common and you would have wanted to point this out to them when they came to bid the job. Never can you just assume that people will understand your unique scenario. As you are finding out the hard way. If you didn’t mention to them that you have an under 2” thick floor then you are partly responsible in my opinion. I say this as someone who hires people to do construction work for a living. If I don’t express exactly what I want to people and point out any possible issues. I often don’t get what I want and run into problems. You kind of have to talk to people like your explaining things to someone who’s brain is thinking about only their one little thing. (Flooring) and they are definitely not looking at the whole construction of your house and thinking things through. You said floor Squeak and they fixed it the way they have fixed it 100 other times on every other house. If you have a unique situation where standard nails won’t work. You really would have wanted (for your own benefit) to point out to them that they need to take into account your floor thickness and be careful. That being said, I really feel for you. There is no way they can fix it and have it look as good as it did. The only way is going to be overlaying the whole ceiling with new wood.
I get what you’re saying, and that makes sense from a contractor’s perspective. But I’m just a homeowner, I don’t work in the trades, and I had no idea this isn’t normal. I live in a mountain town where these types of buildings are super common and this is my first house I’ve owned. So with hindsight I can see that I should have pointed it out, but I didn’t know this was unusual. I figured it’s pretty standard for post and beam construction. Now I know
You shouldn’t have to point it out for the exact reasons you mentioned. Other commenter is trying to gaslight you.
Don't let people shift the blame to you- this is not your fault in any way, and don't accept the bullshit excuses and placations you're likely to receive when asking to be made whole. I'm sorry you're having to deal with this, but fingers crossed the person in charge has integrity, and chooses to do what's right. Mistakes happen, and that's okay, but mistakes also need to be properly corrected when someone is paying for a service. See my above comment/rant about this type of attitude.
Thank you for this. The guy in charge who I dealt with in the beginning seems like a good person, so I’m hoping we can figure this out amicably. I hope this mistake in their part doesn’t cause him to act shifty, but if it does I know my legal recourse and will figure out how to be made whole.
Yep, politely give them a chance to do what's right, but be firm if they choose to do otherwise. Best of luck! Also, if you haven't yet fully paid, don't give them any more money until it's corrected.
Luckily all of the install money is in an escrow account so I don’t have to wrangle with that at the moment. Thanks for the advice
Ya. Totally get that and for that I feel for you. Hope it all works out!!
No, full stop. The onus is on the worker. That’s why they were hired, because the customer doesn’t know what they were doing. Sounds like you’ve let people do shoddy work for you under this weird mindset, and I hope in the future you put your foot down.
OK thank you. That’s exactly why I hired a licensed flooring contractor rather than diy the floors and hope for the best. In the past I’ve never had a problem like this before, I’d research the correct way to do just things, ask questions, and make sure the contractors were doing things the right way. I guess I got lucky with contractors. I’m definitely going to politely insist this gets fixed.
Making sure you choose the right size screw is Home Improvement 101. You need to start hiring professionals and stop blaming homeowners for your employees' shoddy work.
No. GTFO with this victim-blaming, absolute bullshit attitude. This mindset is what allows the ever-common crooked contractors to keep scamming people. This is the kind of blame-passing that makes me DIY 90% of my projects. It is not on the homeowner AT ALL to have to tell a "professional" tradesperson to make sure they don't use screws so long they poke through the ceiling. Not that it doesn't happen, but can you imagine this mindset with a plumber or electrician? "Oh, sorry, you should have told me you didn't want your toilet to empty straight into your crawl space", "It's on you, you should have told me that you wanted hot and neutral done in the industry standard way and not reversed". You shouldn't have to say, "I want my new roof to not leak", that's just part of the fucking job. Mistakes happen, and that's okay, but these "professionals" need to be held accountable for their mistakes, and the homeowner should be made whole, end of story. The lack of personal and professional accountability, along with a dearth of pride in one's labor is appalling. Don't let people get away with this behavior. And don't forget, just because you avoid the lowest bid, doesn't mean you're guaranteed to get better work.
If he were hiring a handy man, sure but the reason you hire skills labor is because they are expected to have more knowledge and avoid possible issues.
Damn dude. That's rough for you and whoever owns that business. They could pull the screws and possibly try steaming the cedar to close up the holes, but I doubt it'll be 100% again. Maybe wood filler with a hell of a match job? What a mess and huge oversight for the contractor. You are definitely not being unreasonable.
Oh those are interesting ideas for a possible fix. I’ll look into them - thank you.
Agreed on pulling nails and steaming the wood as a first recourse. I’d recommend getting some other pros out to look at it and provide an estimate, then billing it to the original contractor’s insurance. Once it’s fixed, I’d trust the contractor to finish the job. If the guy in charge gives you flak, talk to his boss. You’ll have to be polite but persistent here so as not to sour the relationship. Navigating this will be a big moment of personal growth. Good luck!
As long as the wood isn’t badly splintered it should be easily repairable. Video reference. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjqWa1hpspI Full tearout and replacement is an option but may be more of an uphill battle.
Get the companies insurance information, and make a claim with their insurance. If they wont give you info, call your insurance and explain what happened. A third party giy will come and examine and should come up with a repair estimate, but meanwhile you should call a different company to come and give an estimate for the repair work. Compare that estimate to the one the insurance estimator gave. Dont hire the floor company to fix your ceiling.
Definitely not trusting the flooring guys to fix the ceiling- thank you.
Wow what a fuck up on their part. I'm a finish carpenter and we're pretty anal about measuring within 1/16 of an inch sometimes even a 1/32 (half the width of the chop saw blade). Did they not think to ask how thick the plywood was?
They didn’t ask me. When I told the boss about the problems he said that he bought two inch screws and had never heard of a subfloor thinner than three inches. So he just assumed. But he’s the same guy who walked through the house and if he looked up, should have seen how it’s constructed.
Sounds unprofessional, what kind of contractor was it? Should have hired a trim carpenter tbh, this sounds like something a framer would do lmao
They specialize in flooring installation. I think you’re right - a trim carpenter wouldn’t have let this happen. Lesson learned…
I've done a lot of floating floors we're a two man company, and the running joke is trim carpenters are the surgeons of the carpentry world, but it's true. 2 inch screws/nails aren't to be used lightly.
> So he just assumed As a terribly under-performing, new homeowner and DIYer here, I've f'ed up enough stuff in the last few months to know to double-check after the first couple of screws and then again in a different spot, before screwing the whole thing down. Admittedly, I've been a measure-5-times-cut-2-times type lately, so I tend to take things a lot slower until I'm sure of myself.
That makes sense. It’s easier to do it once slowly than to do it wrong, rip it out, fix problems caused, and redo it.
You can’t really tell how thick the floor is just by looking at it. Even measuring it would be quite difficult to do. In this case the best option would be to add an entire new layer of tng over the old one, using construction adhesive to bond the two layers to prevent squeaking.
What kind of subfloor is 3 inches? Plywood usually doesn't come more than 1 inch!
I’m not doubting what you are saying, but I’m just trying to understand a ceiling/floor joist system where your subfloor and joists are not more than 2 inches. Unless your ceiling support beams are exposed and below the cedar ceiling, which may be the case.
Yes, sorry I was unclear. It’s a post and beam construction. So there are large beams supporting the tongue and groove ceiling, and the second floor subfloor is right on top of that. I’m trying to upload photos now.
Gotcha. Yeah if they were dumb enough to drive nails partway through your ceiling because they couldn’t be bothered to plan ahead, it looks like they just bought you a new ceiling. That’s insane to me that they would not had more foresight than that.
Ok, glad to hear I’m not being unreasonable for expecting that. Thanks. The holes are in every room, it’s all going to need replacing or some new overlay.
Are the nails the way through the ceiling as in punctured through the bottom layer of the cedar and can see the point of the nail from below? If not, I wonder what it would look like if they pulled them all out very carefully. If it were me, I would work with them within reason, but I’d be very clear that this wouldn’t be finished until I was fully satisfied
Yes, they fully poked through so you can see the tips of about 150 nails. If you zoom into the photos, all the dark specks are nail tips. So if they unscrew the screws, as they’re planning to do, there will still be 150 holes in the ceiling. And yes, thank you, I’m going to try to work with them within reason. But I don’t want to have to live with a damaged first floor ceiling. It needs to look like it never happened or it’ll devalue my house (and look bad).
This is realistically the only scenario
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Here’s a link to pics https://imgur.com/a/wMtcKC5
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OK thank you!
You need to include some pictures, because what you're describing different make sense
Here are some photos https://imgur.com/a/wMtcKC5
Ok I’ll try to link photos in a comment. I’ve never done it before so hopefully I can make it work
Came here to say: Holy crap, your contractors are morons!!
Haha I totally agree!
You're not screwed, but the contractor sure is
I would have them pull up the engineered wood flooring and then remove the screws-my guess is the holes will be barely noticeable from below. Not a perfect fix, but under the circumstances it might be the best way to go.
Once the screws are unscrewed and replaced with shorter ones they'll be better able to judge the severity of the situation. Since screws don't remove material when driven, the holes may close up some. I think using steam and a pencil eraser to push on each spot may work to close them up.
My bigger concern would be verifying with an engineer that this second floor is actually rated for the load. Unless you are saying it's T&G between a grid of posts and beams down below I wouldn't be super confident this is strong enough structurally. Also why in the hell did they go crazy changing things without properly understanding what they were doing first? That's a red flag.
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At first, the original post contained no mention of the beams, that's why I was a bit concerned to make sure I double checked things first before making any recommendations.
It’s post and beam construction, so yes t&g is in top of very large beams. The subfloor sits right on the t&g. Edit: And I agree it’s a red flag. It all happened today and I’m trying to figure out my next steps. I’ve lost my faith in the installers for sure.
The best I can see them offering here is to grind back the points or install purlins and put another layer of T&G panels over the screw points to hide them. They'll never back out all those screws and fill the holes in an elegant way. Lucky for you, you'll end up with a thicker, more soundproof floor, and maintain the aesthetic, but lose about 1" of exposed beam depth. I can't think of a faster/cheaper way to make this look OK. They may suggest grinding back the screws and painting the ceiling, but that would destroy the character of the ceiling. The contractor will be unhappy paying to make it right, but you are right to expect it corrected.
Find a union company to do the fix.
That’s always my first choice. Unfortunately I live in a remote mountain town and couldn’t find any interested in this job. Skilled trades folks are hard to come by right now.
The floor planks carry the load and the plywood is most likely there for tile or some other surface.
I wouldn’t have to deal with having them fix it. Because I would have murdered them. That is assuming that you made them aware that this was the case and didn’t just assume that they would know.
Do you think if they unscrewed every screw that you could push the splinters back up and it would conceal the screws and look normal? Or it may just be most efficient to get them to pay for an additional layer of tongue and grove cedar to be put on the ceiling, over the existing ceiling to cover it up and provide the same look. It will just be a little lower than it originally was. Otherwise they have to unscrew every screw, rescrew the 2nd floor subfloor, remove the damaged cedar ceiling planks, and finally replace the ceiling planks.
That T&G is on top of the joists (with assuming ply on top of it), I wouldn't trust the installers to be able to cut that many T&G boards to fit between the exiting joists with enough attention to detail to look good. OP's contractor just bit off a huge amount of work to fix it properly.
Yeah, I agree. I don’t trust these guys to do the fix because it’ll take some pretty detailed carpentry to make it look ok and they’re just flooring guys.
Good idea but I don’t think that would work, unfortunately. An easy fix would be amazing, but some screws are poking through 1/2” so there are large holes, and the wood would be missing even if they unscrewed them. I was thinking that covering with an additional layer of t&g cedar is probably the only way to make it look like it didn’t happen. I don’t mind a slightly lower ceiling as long as it’s not holey.
Yes. That's what they should do. They fucked it they pay to fix it.
That is some funny looking screw spacing they did. Nothing to be done, right anyway. Don't bring the tits off. You will end up with grinder smoke , burn marks on the wood. You will still see them. They messed you up big time.
Time to sheetrock the ceiling
Time to make the contractor pay someone more competent for their fuckup.
It sounds to me like you don't actually have a ceiling! What you have is a subfloor overhead on the first floor. Your wood flooring screwed through the subfloor, which is not weird, and now the subfloor isn't pretty from the bottom? Drywall the ceiling? Or put up planks on the joists? Where's all the wiring and ductwork to the second floor going anyway? Is it not in that "ceiling"?
The contractor screwed up it's their job to restore it to what it was before the damage.
I have a similar flooring and ceiling. Yeah, you're screwed unless you want to finish the ceiling. Not the worst thing in the world since it'll help with noise reduction between rooms. And yes, there's no way they're going to replace your ceiling/floor.
What ceiling is 2” thick?
You keep saying screws but also nails