More With the Floor.

Lest we become to comfortable in our kitchen, we felt it would be wise to rip out the floor. Having completed the task, we recommend it highly. The kitchen is now totally uncomfortable. Additionally, we are crippled, coughing and have a 7' tall pile of kindling in our basement.

As covered in previous lectures, our flooring situation was complicated. The stratigraphy was as follows from top to bottom:

1. ca. 2006 - ceramic tile matching in date and style the surrounding kitchen which has been positively dated to the late Home Depot age.
2. ca. 2006 - Hardie Backer cementitious tile backer (contemporary with ceramic tile).
3. ca. 1970s - Cream and brown colored Linoleum in a style inspired by cigarette smoke and spilled gravy.
   
4. ca. 1940s - Linoleum of indeterminate color. It is possible that this linoleum was installed before color existed.
   
5. ca. 1920s - Thin oak flooring. This flooring was apparently installed during a period of relatively low nail prices.
   
6. 1893 - Original pine flooring. Too chopped up to save. Believe us, we tried.
   

Seen above are many of the flooring types we we encountered (we found this wonderful montage below the sink cabinet). Below, ceramic tile. Far right, original pine boards. Above right, cream and brown linoleum. Above center, early colorless linoleum tile.


Removing the tile and backer board was easy. You could say we barely broke a sweat, but Adam is always sweating.

After the removal of the tile we had thin oak flooring.

We made a beaver hut with all of the oak flooring.


Eggs anyone?

Reagan ponders the possibility of somehow sneaking out so that she won't have to deal with cleaning up the pile of spikey, nail-ridden oak pieces.

This is the original pine flooring. After we cleaned up the beaver hut. The floor boards themselves were very nice but they only covered about 80% of the kitchen floor. If you know anybody in the market for a 114 year old floor, give us a call. This opportunity won't last long.


Finally we got to the original subfloor, wide rough-sawn pine boards. These would have been a cool floor if they had been installed so they touched each other, or the walls. The barn look is very hip in kitchen design right now.

We added a plywood subfloor on top of the pine boards so the final floor will be at the right level. The canine is our dog Fiver. She is getting ready to christen the new floor by spilling her water bowl on it.

Next up...new walls.

Flooring issues.

We've been in quite a dilemma with the kitchen floor. We hate the cheap tile that's on there now. Originally, we wanted to put cork floors down, but we found out that in order to make the new floors level with the existing floors, we'd have to rip out the original pine boards that are still there, underneath the more recent layers. This idea pained Reagan, of course, and so Adam tried to figure out a way that we could save the original floors.

Option 1: Put down the cork and try to make a well-designed way to match up the two floor levels (primarily between the kitchen and the dining room). Well, this might be tricky, and chances are we'd stub our toes a lot.

Option 2: Nix the cork and just refinish the original pine floor. The problem here is that we ripped out 2 thresholds, and so these areas would have to be patched. Or, we could just put in new thresholds that were flat or something. However, we started to uncover the original floor, and it's not in great shape. There are other areas that would need patching, and there are lots and lots of nail holes from the later floor.

Lower right corner, existing tile. Lower center, the thin oak boards over the original pine, upper center. The two little squares on the left are the cork samples.

The original pine on the other side of the sink, by the door to the side deck (with lots of paw and foot prints).

Option 3: Suck it up, Reagan, and rip out the original floor and install a nice, even, new cork floor. Yeah, that's what we're going to have to do.