ROFH (or, "Rolling On The Floor, Hammering")

This Old House has original hardwood floors. We can see evidences of the floor in our closet and under the kitchen sink, but it has been covered with carpet and linoleum. Since our kitchen floor was a mostly-white, old, dirty linoleum which wouldn't shine after a mopping, Britta and I decided to pull up the floor to see what we could do to recover the craftsman feel of the kitchen.

I am convinced the demo part of just about any construction job is the most fun. Tearing through and ripping up old vinyl flooring did not disappoint in that regard. The worst part of the prep work was the adhesive which readily stuck to the bottom of my shoes, but apparently not to the bottom of the linoleum.After pulling up the ugly linoleum, we saw what we feared: the hardwood floors where not just covered in vinyl, but they had laid out another subfloor layer of plywood on top of the hardwood and attached it with wood screws every 6". That pretty-well scared me from continuing with the idea of refinishing the original wood, and switching to plan "B".

The floor went in very quickly, and it was done in one day. Of course, it helps that we only had 127 sq feet to cover and all the cuts were square, but hey! I'm not complaining. One of my home teaching families let me borrow their Milwaukee 18V cordless circular saw (a great future present for a father's day, birthday, or Christmas; shameless, I know). Anyhow, we both love our new floor and we think I really helps to add a new dimension to the kitchen and makes it feel larger and warmer.