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Hi all,
We have recently purchased a unit that was built in 1980. The floors are vinyl/lino (not sure) in the kitchen, tiles in the bathroom, and carpet to the lounge and bedrooms.
I'm looking to replace the carpet with hybrid flooring and redo the vinyl in the kitchen. We've pulled off the carpet and underlay in one of the bedrooms and found this:
From what I can see, this floor looks to be particle board. My initial thought was that the black area was mould (we found black mould underneath the skirting boards on the gyprock walls that backed into the shower and our building/pest inspection noted mildew on the floor of the crawl space), but it doesn't wipe off easily. So the second thought was that it was glue for the carpet underlay, however, 1) it's not across the entire board as the joins aren't discoloured, 2) the underlay came up without a fight, and 3) there are no tears or glue on the underlay either.
I'm also not confident that we've reached the subfloor itself as the above looks different from what the inspector photographed from the crawl space itself (below). I don't really want to rip these out in the event that there isn't another level beneath them.
If the particle board is the subfloor, then we need to clean and level it before we can install our hybrid flooring. My question is how to clean them off? I'm aware that some adhesive glues from the 80s had asbestos in it, so I'm reluctant to just get in and sand it back. I'm also reluctant to just put the black plastic over the top of it without cleaning as if it is mould/mildew, I don't want to just neglect that and end up with air quality/health issues.
Would welcome any thoughts/advice.
Cheers!
