Kitchen Floor Day 1: Removal

Zoe's parents are visiting for 2 weeks. Her father, Dave, is a builder by trade and was nice enough to give a hand with a home project - replacing our kitchen floor. What follows is an account of that project during a week of record-breaking temperatures (90's in the first days of May).

Here we have the kitchen floor as it was originally. It was a linoleum (well, probably vinyl actually) floor which was showing its age. A lovely pattern of yellow and browns, it hid dirt very well (especially in the parts which were permanently dirty - the new dirt was indistinguishable), and Zoe lamented every time we cleaned it. Not that it didn't clean ok, it just never really looked clean. And it had a couple of chips and scratches and burns from the past 15 years and the previous owner's devil child (Megan - who was nice enough to carve her name in everything she could - range, doorframes, sink, closet, windows, you name it).

We discussed replacing the linoleum with tile (which Dave is quite handy at), but on an offhand comment of "how about hardwood" or "Pergo", Zoe said she thought that would look nice. Our friends Jon and Jen did their kitchen in hardwood, and it looks great. People are afraid to use hardwood due to the fear of moisture, but wood is fine as long as you don't let the water sit there unattended for hours on end. I had happened to look at Pergo before and when we went to Home Depot to have a look there was a lovely Beech finish which matched the bar we put in. So, Pergo was decided upon, and Dave and I sighed a bit with relief. It's not that we didn't want to do tile (well, I wasn't looking forward to it - that's why I recruited Dave), but it would have likely been a lot more work. As it was we had to rip up one layer of plywood, but for tile we might have had to rip up the entire floor down to the joists to fit in the cementboard to attach the tiles. Not a fun idea. As you can see, it was hard enough work ripping up the single layer of plywood and linoleum...

It took the entire first day to rip up the plywood. All was not easy (beyond the brute force required - they were certainly thorough in nailing down the plywood when the house was built). The dishwasher stuck out further than the cabinets' kickboard (a problem which will be quite a pain later), and we needed to cut out the kickboard from under the cabinets. Out came the sawsall (recently purchased for just this job). It cut through the kickboard at a frightening rate, and it turns out that it was really only attached at the top through the cabinet bottom. Was not such a big deal to remove. The spacer between the fridge and stove was attached with something like 3 inch screws that just spun rather than come out (eventually required some persuasion a.k.a. brute force to remove).

However, there was one big problem with the cabinets. We needed to remove the plywood back at least a 1/4 inch beyond the kickboard front (you leave a 1/4 inch gap in the Pergo for expansion), yet the seam of the plywood was not in the right place. So, we needed to cut back in the enclosed space under the cabinets - not an easy thing to do. But, if the right tool doesn't exist, make it! It seemed a small circular saw would work great, but the space was too restrictive ( only four inches of clearance between floor and cabinet). So, off to the hardware store we went, where we found a 3 3/8" blade. Then we had to ask around to find a piece of hardware to attach it to so we could mount it on a drill (having seen such a thing for other wheels to drills). The response we got was that we could use a particular bit or another, but that no one in their right mind would sell one expressly for attaching a circular saw blade to a drill. So, we bought it, mounted it and went to work. It turned out to be probably the most dangerous tool I've tried to use. It hopped, skipped and jumped while cutting, and if one let it go a millimeter in the direction the blade was turning, off it went. Not something I would recommend using lightly (but it did save us a hell of a lot of work). More useful overall (and safer) was a jigsaw and a piece of 2x4 which worked to adjust the height so we could cut through only the top layer of plywood and make removal easier. The only problem was that we ruined blades very quickly. They became bent and twisted quickly and eventually broke off.

That was pretty much the last step of removal. We ended the day by bringing in the new plywood to put down. Six 4x8 sheets of 11/32" thickness plywood. It just happened that we needed a hair less than 3/8" thickness and Home Depot had a variety of oddball thicknesses 11/32, 17/32, 19/32, etc. Turned out to be a perfect fit.

Well, that's was it for day one. It was a lot of work removing that plywood to get to the point where we could start installation. In fact, it was the hardest, most time consuming part.