I’m Mario Vilchis, and I run the crew at Vilchis Hardwood Floors. One of the most common jobs we do in Cary is the second floor of a two-story house. The builder put wood downstairs and carpet everywhere else, and now the owners want hardwood or vinyl plank in the upstairs hall, the bedrooms, or the bonus room. Pull that carpet up, and a lot of them find out they have a squeaky subfloor.
Sometimes it’s one spot outside a bedroom door. Sometimes the whole hallway sounds like an old boat. The carpet and pad were softening that noise, and a hard floor won’t.
The good news is that the stretch between tearing out the carpet and putting down the new floor is the best chance you’ll ever get to fix it. Here’s why that window matters, what causes the noise, and how it gets fixed properly.
Why Upstairs Squeaks Have To Be Fixed First
On a main floor over a crawlspace, a lot of squeaks can be fixed from underneath. You can get to the joists, add a shim or a block, and leave the finished floor alone.
Upstairs, there’s a finished drywall ceiling under the floor. The only way to reach the subfloor without cutting into a ceiling is from above, and once the new floor is down, from above means through the new floor. On hardwood, that’s a screw driven through the face of the board and a filled hole you’ll always know is there. On floating vinyl plank or laminate, it’s worse, because you can’t screw through a floating floor without pinning it down. The planks have to come up.
So the squeaks get fixed while the subfloor is bare, or they mostly don’t get fixed at all.
What Actually Makes A Subfloor Squeak
A squeak is two things rubbing when you step. The APA technical note on floor squeaks lists about a dozen possible causes, including wet lumber, panel spacing, ductwork, and joist hangers, and makes the point that every squeak needs its own look to find the real cause. In upstairs floors, most of them come down to a few things.
The subfloor is moving on its nails. If a panel isn’t pulled tight to the joist, every step pushes it down a fraction of an inch and the nail shank rubs in its hole. Nails that missed the joist entirely do the same thing.
There’s a gap between the panel and the joist. Joists aren’t perfectly identical. Some sit a little low, some have a slight twist, and solid lumber shrinks as it dries out in the years after the house is built. If the subfloor wasn’t glued down, or the glue let go, those gaps turn into a squeak.
Panel edges are rubbing. Most modern subfloor panels lock together with tongue-and-groove edges, and when they’re installed too tight or move against each other, the joint itself can creak.
Metal is involved. Joist hangers and ductwork can tick or creak where wood rubs against them. Those are harder to reach from above.
The season makes all of this worse in winter. When the heat is running, the air inside a Triangle house gets dry, the wood shrinks a little, and fasteners that were snug in August are loose by January. Our post on hardwood acclimation in the Triangle explains how much indoor humidity swings here between summer and winter. A floor that seems quiet when you tear out the carpet in July may not stay quiet.
How A Squeaky Subfloor Gets Fixed While It’s Bare
This is the part of the job nobody sees once the new floor is down, and it’s the part that decides whether the hallway is quiet five years from now.
- Get it completely clear. Carpet, pad, tack strip, and every staple come out, and the floor gets vacuumed so the nail lines are easy to see.
- Find the joists. The rows of nail heads across the subfloor show where every joist runs. Snapping a chalk line over each row makes the next steps faster and keeps screws where they belong.
- Walk the whole floor. Go slowly, heel to toe, in rows across every room, closet, and the hallway, and mark each squeak with tape or chalk. A second person helps, since squeaks are easier to pinpoint when you aren’t the one standing on them.
- Screw the subfloor down at every mark. Subfloor screws driven into the joist on both sides of the squeak pull the panel tight and hold it there. Screws grip in a way nails don’t, which is why they work where the original nails let go. Stay on the joist line. Between the joists, a screw can find a pipe, a wire, or a duct.
- Deal with the seams and the loose nails. A seam that creaks gets screwed down on both sides. Nails that have backed up get set or pulled, because a raised nail head will show through vinyl plank and can rub under hardwood.
- Walk it again. Then fix whatever still talks back. It’s normal to make more than one pass.
- Check that it’s flat. A long straightedge shows the high seams and the dips. High spots, like a panel edge that swelled during construction, get sanded or planed down. Low spots get filled.
- Take moisture readings on the subfloor before any new flooring goes on top.
Most squeaks are gone after that. A few aren’t, and it’s better to know that up front. If a joist sits well below its neighbors, screws from above may not close the gap, and the real fix is blocking from below, which upstairs means opening the ceiling. If the whole floor bounces when you walk across it, that’s the framing, not a squeak, and it’s a question for a carpenter or an engineer. Noise from ductwork or a joist hanger also needs access from below. We’ll tell you which kind you have before the new floor goes in, not after.
Which New Floor Is Quietest Upstairs?
Once the subfloor is tight and flat, almost any floor can be quiet. They don’t all forgive a bad subfloor equally, though.
Nail-down hardwood is fastened into the subfloor every few inches, so it adds stiffness to the whole floor. Over a tight subfloor, it’s a quiet floor. Even a well-installed wood floor can make a little noise in dry winter months as the boards move, and that’s normal. If you’re weighing wood for the upstairs, our hardwood flooring installation page has more on how we install it.
Floating vinyl plank and laminate don’t attach to the subfloor at all. That’s fine over a good subfloor, but it means a floating floor can’t hold a loose panel down, and any movement underneath still comes through. Dips are the bigger problem. A floating floor that bridges a low spot flexes every time you step on it, and the locking joints click. Thin laminate over a wavy subfloor gets noisy fast. That’s why underlayment and flatness matter so much with luxury vinyl plank, and why we look at the subfloor before recommending click-lock, glue-down, or rigid core.
Glue-down vinyl plank is quiet and solid, but only on a subfloor that’s flat and clean, because every bump telegraphs through.
Squeaks Versus Footsteps Downstairs
These are two different problems, and people sometimes expect one fix to solve both.
A squeak is the floor itself making noise. Footstep noise is sound traveling down into the room below. Carpet and pad soak up a lot of impact sound, so swapping carpet for any hard floor makes footsteps louder downstairs. Screwing down the subfloor won’t change that. What helps is an underlayment with a good impact rating, area rugs in the rooms that get the most traffic, and felt pads on chair legs.
If the room under your new floor is a bedroom or a home office, bring it up during the estimate. Our post on sound underlayment and IIC ratings was written for condos, but the same numbers explain what an underlayment can and can’t do for footstep noise in a house.
Getting Your Upstairs Done In Cary
A lot of Cary two-stories follow the same pattern: wood downstairs, carpet upstairs, and a staircase and landing where the two meet. When the carpet finally goes, the new floor has to meet the old one cleanly at the top of the stairs, and the stairs themselves are usually their own project. Our guide to stair treads, transitions, and thresholds covers what that involves and how it should show up on a quote.
On a free in-home estimate we measure, check the subfloor and its moisture, and talk through the floor you want. You get a written, fixed quote by email, usually within a day or two. Our shop is at 237 Obie Dr in Durham, a short run down I-40, and most Cary neighborhoods are 20 to 25 minutes away. That covers Preston, Amberly, Cary Park, Carpenter Village, and West Cary off Green Level, across the 27511, 27513, 27518, and 27519 ZIP codes. For the full picture of what we install and refinish in town, see the page for our Cary flooring contractors.
Vilchis Hardwood Floors
237 Obie Dr, Durham, NC 27713
(919) 794-1116
[email protected]
Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Serving Cary, Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Apex, Morrisville, Garner, and Wake Forest.
Request a free in-home estimate
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Squeaky Floors Be Fixed Without Pulling Up The Carpet?
Sometimes. There are kits that drive a screw through the carpet into the joist and snap the head off below the surface, and they work on some squeaks. If the carpet is coming out anyway, fixing the subfloor while it’s bare is easier and much more thorough, because you can see the nail lines and reach every spot.
Will New Hardwood Stop The Squeaks By Itself?
Not reliably. Nailing hardwood down adds some stiffness, but if the subfloor is still moving on the joists, the squeak usually comes back through the new floor. It’s much easier to fix the subfloor first than to chase a squeak through finished hardwood.
Why Are My Floors Squeakier In Winter?
Heating dries out the air in the house. Wood loses moisture and shrinks a little, so fasteners loosen and small gaps open between the subfloor and the joists. Many squeaks quiet down again in the humid summer months, which is why a floor that seems fine in July can be noisy by January.
Does Fixing Squeaks Add To The Cost Of The Job?
It’s part of subfloor prep, and it’s on the written quote before the work starts, so it’s not a surprise at the end. Call (919) 794-1116 and we’ll come take a look at your upstairs.
