Flooring removal across the Golden Isles.

Tile is the slow, dusty one. The tile itself comes up in pieces, but the thinset bonded to the slab or backer board is the real work — it has to be chipped or pried loose, and it throws dust the whole time. We sheet off the room where we can and haul the rubble out as we go, because broken tile and mortar are heavy and they pile up fast. We pull the covering and the bonded material we can safely separate; what’s left fused to the slab past that point is a grinding conversation, not a haul (more on that below).

Laminate and floating LVP are the fast version. Because they were installed to float — clicked together, not glued or nailed — they come apart in runs and lift quickly once the trim and transitions are off. Glued-down vinyl and sheet vinyl are slower: the adhesive holds the material flat to the subfloor, so it scrapes up in strips rather than peeling clean, and the residue left behind is part of the on-site conversation, not always part of the haul.

Hardwood and engineered wood come up board by board, the way they went down. Nailed or stapled planks have to be pried and the fasteners cleared so the next floor sits flat. When water, pets, or a leak got under the floor, the subfloor below is often soft or rotted — we pull damaged subfloor sheets along with the covering when that’s the scope, so the next install starts on something solid. We don’t reframe what’s under the subfloor; that boundary is spelled out below.