I think the one thing I am most looking forward to in the new kitchen is the new floor. For the two years we have lived in this house, every time I stepped onto the linoleum flooring, my heart broke a little.
The old floor was stained, had cigarette burn holes, and was “patched” with nails where a seam cracked.
Luckily there wasn’t too much of a surprise as “we” took the flooring out. And by “we”, I mean our friend Matt as I stood and made sure he had his gloves on and a crowbar when needed. Matt came to visit last weekend and in true West Street fashion, we put him to work!
{our helper for the day, Matt}
We discovered there was only the layer of linoleum, a layer of plywood, and some random sheets of tar-like paper to remove for this first phase. It was pretty easy!
The only “glitch” that we ran into was trying to remove the baseboard heater. The second we cut into the copper pipe, water started streaming out. As I stood occupying the bucket, the guys went into the basement to verify that the water really was turned off. The water did finally stop coming out {we knew there would be some water left in the pipes, we just got worried as the pressure took a while to subside}.
{getting rid of our VERY inefficient “heater”}
Once the water stopped and we felt confident to fully cut the copper pipes to remove the heater, we quickly learned cutting the copper pipes wouldn’t be as easy as it sounded. The blade of the sawzall kept falling out, and I had to do a mad dash for some towels as we cut open the pipes above the washer and dryer!
In the end, we no longer have the very inefficient baseboard heater or crappy linoleum floors. Now, we just have holes in the floor reminding us of the heater’s former location {and some other random holes in the floor which we have no idea what they were originally for}.
Phase 1 is complete! Phase 2? That involves tearing out the actual, original hardwood floors. Yes, I know. I am sick to my stomach about it too. I REALLY wanted to refinish and leave them in place. However, the floor is so unbearably uneven, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to be okay with leaving them as is. On top of that, the in-floor heat {our new, EFFICIENT method of heating the space} will be more effective with the ceramic tiles we plan to replace the floors with.
Once Phase 2 is done, we will be able to lay cement board, self-leveling concrete, additional subfloor, and then the tiles. Whew!
Tomorrow the inspector comes to {hopefully} pass all of the electrical and plumbing work and we can then move on to reconstructing our kitchen {I am SO OVER the demo part of this remodel and just want to get stuff put back into place}.
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