Flooring Demolition

With the painting done and the boxes of laminate acclimated, it was time to begin the major part of the renovation - the flooring. My parents came down to help us kick things off. The carpet removal from the living/dining room was cake. Rip up the carpet and pad, pull up the tack strips and some large staples around the perimeter and boom - you're done.

But once we started to tear up the flooring that was in the hallway, we realized that we were in for a long haul. The floor that we were told was a type of laminate was actually linoleum.

It was glued onto a plywood underlayment that was stapled to the subfloor with thousands upon thousands of staples. Doug had to pry it up into splintery sections while I came behind him with a hammer and pounded in the staples. We spent about three days doing nothing but this. THREE SOLID DAYS. My ears were ringing and my wrists were aching. My dad had a great tool to help cut the staples off in the hard to reach sections.

Oh yeah, and then we found that the sub-floor had rotted through by our front door due to water damage.

My dad took charge of cutting the bad section out,

and replacing it with a new section of sub-floor.  We will have to replace our front door and also a board underneath it, but that will have to wait for the spring (and more money!).  In the meantime, we will do some major caulking on the outside and pray that it does not leak over the winter.

What a mess! Sadie was very stressed out during this process with all the noise and being kept in her kennel all day (to avoid getting splinters or nail punctures).

We eventually got all the flooring removed and were able to start laying down the laminate.

This is how we lived while the kitchen was torn up. In addition to our family room furniture, we also had Sadie's kennel, a piano, kitchen cart, kitchen table and six chairs, plus the refrigerator and trash cans to work around.

Good times!