A Tale of Five Floors

My big weekend adventure was to tear our the added layers of flooring in my dining room, in hopes of uncovering the original pine floorboards to match the living room. I’d like to have the floors in both rooms refinished together. (Eventually, I think I’ll tile the kitchen with real tiles, but that’s down the road quite a ways.)

Here’s a pictorial account of my archaeological adventure. It’s like National Geographic. But indoors.

Layer 1: Laminate Flooring
Ugly factor: Moderate ugliness. It’s obvious that we don’t have actual slate, here. As evidence, I present to you the following picture, in which you can see that two “tiles” with the exact same pattern were installed right next to each other. And in more than one instance, at that. Why…?
Ease of removal: Luckily, this stage was easy — all I had to do was remove the edge trim and the tiles popped right apart.

Layer 2: Plastic Liner
Ugly factor: It’s trash bag-tastic! Trashtacular!
Ease of removal: Super easy. It rolled right up and found its way into a real trash bag.

Layer 3: Vinyl sheet
Ugly factor: Vinyl — when linoleum just seems too upscale.
Ease of removal: Moderate. I lucked out in that that this layer was not glued to the floor as I feared it would have been if it were real linoleum. So it rolled up easily, but those kitchen cabinets (pictured below) were actually resting on this layer of flooring. I had to remove them from the wall and go scooting them all over the room from this stage on.

Layer 4: Plywood
Ugly factor: Ummm… well, it is wood. Just not the kind I was looking for.
Ease of removal: None. Nada. Nothing was easy about this layer. For one thing, the plywood was anchored to the floor with a million screws. Screws that I couldn’t find, because their heads had been sealed over with a coat of plaster. Each time I discovered one, I had to clean the top of it with a wet paintbrush and a knife to get enough plaster out for the screwdriver bits to catch a grip.

Once in a while I’d miss a screw, try to yank the board out, and go flying across the room as I ripped the offending screw right through the plywood.

This part of the project took a full day’s work, and was only possible with the help of one of these babies:

Oh yeah. It’s tool time.

Layer 5: Original boards!
Ugly factor: They’re dirty, but in good shape. Refinishing should be a breeze. Especially since I’m not doing it.