We've been busy in the kitchen. After my last post, the burning question was, do we have hardwood floors under the gross vinyl??
We decided to rip out this little baby cabinet next to the stove to find out for sure.
It was kind of a challenge to figure out how to remove it, there were no screws or nails visible from the inside. Once we got the stove pulled out, a swift kick by my mountain man proved the most effective way to get it outta there.
Seeing all the cat hair balls under the stove was AWESOME. Seriously, this is a real problem.
Gross cat hair aside, we got to work with a pry bar and hammer, loosening up that floor. We borrowed a shingle-remover from our neighbor, which was kinda fun to use. Why would he have that, anyway? I'm positive he would never re-roof his two story house. Anyway....
The verdict was that we have awesome, original white oak floors in this kitchen. The planks are 3.25 inches, one inch thicker than the rest of the house. And some ass clown poured black adhesive over every square inch of the wood to put down underlayment for cheap vinyl.
Curses!! Sadly, I don't think I can pin this on Boozie Susie. I'm thinking this was done before she lived here, but you never know. We knew that even if the wood couldn't be saved, we'd have to remove the top layer of vinyl, the yellow speckled vinyl/linoleum underneath, and the masonite underlayment before going over the top with new hardwood. We scraped, yanked, and wrestled with 3 inch nails that were pounded into the underlayment every few inches.
Tell me, is this really necessary? These also do not feel good on your bare feet. Yeah, I'm stupid like that. Here is where we're at today:
We had a general contractor stop over to give us a quote on the whole shebang, he first told us we couldn't save the floor, but then when I brought my claws out and told him THIS FLOOR WILL BE SAVED politely asked him to check for sure, he scraped a little mastic up with his key and said he could do it.
We actually plan to get as much of the black off as we can before any work is done to save $. Luckily, the materials used don't contain any asbestos, so we should be fine working on this ourselves. He recommended sharp scrapers, no solvents, and lots of elbow grease. YAY! Looks like I won't be doing anything fun for the next month.
If anyone has gone through something similar, please help me out! We already bought this tool which actually works pretty well for getting the top layers off: Now we just need some advice on getting the black goo off the wood with minimal damage. I've heard steam, hot water and vinegar, but I'm looking for real life solutions, so send them my way!