Of all the rooms in your home, your bathroom probably sees the most abuse. After all, family members can spend hours every day creating steam while using the shower. In addition, just using the water or the toilet can result in drips on the floor which can infiltrate cracks and tiny holes. Over time, all of this water can cause significant damage to your bathroom floor. Even with flooring such as vinyl, tile, or linoleum, the sub-floor underneath them is probably wood, and wood rots when it's wet long enough. If it gets bad enough, you may feel a little "sponginess" or dipping when you walk on certain areas of the floor. That will give you a definite clue that it's time for replacing rotten bathroom flooring.
Putting another layer of flooring over the existing floor isn't going to take care of the underlying problem. After determining that your sub-floor is rotten, you're going to need to pull up your toilet, rip up at least part of the current flooring, and replace the damaged wood that lies at the base of your trouble. Keep in mind that if the floor boards are rotten, there's a good chance that you have some rot in the floor joists underneath it, and this is another problem that will need to be looked into and addressed. It definitely isn't an easy job nor one for amateurs. Unless you feel that you have the skills it's going to take, you should contact a professional to help you replace your rotten bathroom floor.
The first thing you need to do is to determine the extent of the problem. It may only be a small area of the top layer of the floor that needs to be replaced, and this will be a fairly simple job. It will help if you have visual access to the problem area from below so that you can see how far the damage has spread. If it appears that the entire floor and deeper layers need to be replaced, that's when you should seek advice.
When you do discover an area where there has been leaking, you can determine if the wood is just wet or rotted by trying to stick a screwdriver through it. Cracked tile floors can be evidence that there is a problem underneath in that they indicate that the sub-floor isn't providing the solid base for them that it should. Replacing rotten bathroom flooring isn't the most pleasant job around the house, but when a problem exists, it's very necessary.
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