For a long time we have wanted to replace the flooring in the living room and kitchen. We have put it off for a variety of reasons, don't know what we want, don't have the time, well if you do the floors you have to do the cabinets, etc. etc. etc.
A little history:
We have lived in our home for 12+ years. In that time we have had two babies grow up to be medium size children. We have eaten lots of dinners in the living room, and spilled on the carpet. We have moved kitchen appliances around in the kitchen and scraped up the floor. We have hated working so hard to actually keep the floor clean, all of that led us to making getting the new flooring a priority, and then building up from there. When we tried to put a new dishwasher in the old dishwasher's spot, it wouldn't fit. When we got new dual-pane windows, and sliding glass door I noticed that there were at least three layers of linoleum on two distinct sub-floor levels.
I finally bit the bullet last night and started ripping out the living room floor. We are pretty sure that we are going to use "Engineered Hardwood" as our flooring, and we know that we need to get down to the plywood over the floor joists and build back up.
The top layer of the kitchen is a yellowish linoleum, with brown squarish things. The living room is a combination of wood tiles (along a four foot wide walkway from the front door to the kitchen) and brownish/black spotted carpet(not when it was new :) ). The carpet used to be held down by standard tack strips, but the carpet edge along the wood tile walkway has frayed, so the nails of the tack strip showed (and poked your feet) through.
Last night I felt so refreshed from a nice dinner with the family that I ran over to Home Depot and got some demolition tools. Sledge Hammer, Pry Bar and Knee Pads. I was thinking that at a minimum I could get the really bad tack strips taken out, if I was feeling really adventurous I could take out all the tack strips along the walkway edge.
I was pleasantly surprised how well the pry bar ripped out the carpet tack strip. I easily took out the four foot section that was causing many poked feet and knees, then I realized that the pad below the carpet also had a tack strip, so I ripped out that four foot section. This took about 3 minutes! My son was really helpful, pulling back the carpet for me to work, getting the vacuum to clean up years of accumulated crud and decomposing carpet and pad.
I was feeling invincible, I was thinking I could rip that whole room out before bed time. I thought I would at least see how much work it would be to rip out one of the one square foot wood tiles so that I would know how much I would be up against later in the week.
As I held the wonder bar in just the right spot, I had my son whack the far end with the sledge hammer, at first he said "it's just bouncing off the curved end" I assured him that he was doing what I wanted. I wanted to separate the tile from the linoleum I thought it was stuck on top of. Well, I guess I was supposed to separate the Linoleum from the sub-floor and throw the whole thing in the trash. It came up very cleanly as a 6 inch by 12 inch rectangle, black glue (mastic?) on the sub-floor and the back of the tile.
I now had a good place to grab the rest of the tile and pry it out. Again, I was feeling adventurous, so, with my wife's permission, I removed as much of the wood tile as I could fit in the garbage can that night. Fortunately trash pickup was the next morning, so I put all of the household trash in the bottom, then crammed the tiles on top. Once the first tile came out, it was pretty easy to get the wonder bar under an entire tile and pop it out individually. My son gave me the "one row left" warning, so I ripped out one last row of four tiles and threw them in the trash. There was very little leftover junk on the floor, very little of the linoleum was left behind as it was stuck really well to the bottom of the wood tiles. The sub-floor was mostly intact, with a few spots where the wonder bar dug in a little too deep. After a good vacuuming we threw an old blanket over the sub-floor to not have to step on the glue.
So, next step is the remove the rest of the wood tiles, then remove the sub-floor. The hope is that the sub-floor is nailed or stapled to the floor, and not glued down. If it is glued down, there will be a lot of junk left on the plywood. However it is most likely that it's nailed down so there will only be a few holes left behind. I've been told that the easiest way to do this is to use a circular saw and saw almost all the way through the particle board material "scoring it" so that it is easy to break out. This same approach will be used to remove the multiple layers of linoleum and particle board in the kitchen. I figured it would be easier to start in the living room with no appliances or furniture in the way, then use what I learn to get the job done in the kitchen.
I hope to post some progress pictures soon.
God Bless,
John
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