Clean tear-out.
Substrate ready.
Tile, hardwood, LVP, and carpet removed cleanly. Substrate inspected, leveled, prepped for install. Citadel Spaces handles every step before the new floor arrives — built around the realities of Sacramento construction.
Request a QuoteWhat We Tear Out
The four kinds of old floor we handle.
Old flooring removal is dusty, heavy, and often surprising. Sacramento homes hide water damage, asbestos-era underlayments, and substrate issues under the surface. Our crews handle the whole removal end to end.
Tile & Stone
Ceramic, porcelain, marble, and natural-stone removal. Thinset chipped down to substrate, mortar bed evaluated, substrate leveled for the new install.
Hardwood & LVP
Glue-down, nail-down, and floating hardwood and LVP pulled cleanly. Staples and adhesive residue removed, substrate scraped flat.
Carpet & Pad
Carpet, pad, and tack-strip removal. Subfloor inspected for water staining, soft spots, or pet damage before the next layer goes down.
Subfloor Prep
Self-leveling underlayment, plywood patching, plank replacement, moisture barriers. Substrate handed off flat, dry, ready.
Substrate Science
What’s under the floor matters more.
Most failed installs aren’t about the new flooring — they’re about substrate the GC or DIYer skipped. Sacramento construction has three common substrate types, and each one prep’s differently. Here’s how we evaluate them.
Concrete slab
Found in most Sacramento single-story homes built post-1960. Critical to test for moisture, alkalinity, and flatness before any flooring goes down. Self-leveling underlayment is often required.
Plywood subfloor
Standard for two-story Sacramento homes and most additions. Soft spots, deflection, or joist gaps reveal themselves during tear-out and must be addressed before install — otherwise the new floor mirrors the failure.
Underlayment-over
Common in older Sacramento homes with original tile or vinyl set over plywood or planks. Asbestos-era flooring (pre-1985) must be tested first. Often the source of the surprise that derails a remodel timeline.
Dust Control · Disposal · Asbestos
Operations that respect your home.
Demolition is where most flooring projects go wrong — surprises, dust, damage to surrounding work. Our process eliminates the surprises.
- HEPA air scrubbers running through every demo project, start to finish
- Plastic sheeting at every door, HVAC returns taped off
- Tile chipping uses dust shrouds on the chisels
- Debris bagged and hauled off-site daily — no overnight piles
- Dump fees, transfer-station charges, HOA compliance all included
- Asbestos-era flooring (pre-1985) pre-tested and referred to licensed abatement
Service Area
Demolition across five regions.
Citadel Spaces handles flooring demolition across the greater Sacramento region. Five regional pods cover 25 cities — disposal, dump fees, HOA debris-removal compliance handled as part of the quoted scope.
Sacramento Core
North Sacramento
South County
East County
Placer & Foothills
Common Questions
Demolition & Prep
FAQ
Tear-out questions get specific — dust, asbestos, disposal, timing. Here's how our Sacramento crew answers the ones we hear most.
Talk to a SpecialistEvery demo job runs HEPA air scrubbers from start to finish, plastic-sheets adjacent rooms, and tapes HVAC returns. Tile chipping uses dust shrouds on the chisels. Adjacent furniture is covered. Daily cleanup keeps the home livable.
Common in Sacramento homes built before 1985 — particularly 9x9 tile and certain vinyl sheet flooring. We don't handle asbestos abatement directly, but we identify the risk during the pre-demo walk and connect you with licensed Sacramento abatement contractors when needed.
We haul all debris off-site at the end of each work day. Dump fees, transfer-station charges, and HOA debris-removal compliance are included in the quoted scope. No dumpster sitting on your driveway for a week.
A single-room tear-out usually completes in 1–2 days. Whole-floor tear-outs run 3–7 days depending on the material (tile takes longest, carpet fastest). We confirm during the pre-demo walk.
Basic leveling and patching is typically $1.50–$3/sq ft. Self-leveling underlayment over a problem substrate adds $2–$4/sq ft. Plywood patching for joist-level issues is quoted individually. Always a fixed price before work begins.
Done right, no. We work tight to the baseboard and protect trim with painter's tape. If your new floor is going in at a different height (common with LVP-over-tile situations), we discuss baseboard removal as part of the scope.
Either, or both. We frequently handle tear-out for general contractors and design-build firms in the Sacramento area who do their own install, and vice versa. Pricing is straightforward both ways.
We move all standard furniture in and out of the work area as part of the tear-out. Clear breakables, electronics, and anything fragile or irreplaceable before our team arrives.