Laminate Flooring, can I…

[Unregistered-Tim Taylor]

The previous homeowner chose to install ceramic tile (interlocking Spanish tiles) directly over a hardwood floor. They used no backer board and applied mastic directly to the wood. Over the years, the flexing of the floors has led to broken and looses tiles. Getting the tiles up is easy, but the leftover mastic is a problem. I want to install laminate floor but was unsure how clean I needed to get the old hardwood floor before laying the laminate.

[Unregistered-BobF]

Couple issues here. If the old mastic is hard and chips off, you may end up with a crunchy sounding floor.
The subfloor for laminate needs to be flat within about 3/16″. If you end up with hollow spots, this will weaken the laminate joints and they could fail. But if the floor is pretty flat, the foam underlayment will absorb minor imperfections.
So I would sand off the mastic until it is reasonably smooth. Shouldn’t be too difficult with a palm sander and it should go pretty fast.

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