Dining Room Floor

Soooooo... Yesterday (day off for Canada Day), I decided I *had* to do a bit of work on the house. I didn't feel like working on anything on the to-do list (ugh), so I did one of those projects that's really not that important yet, but still needs to be done at some point.

I decided to tear out the crappy new laminate/plywood(s) to expose the original hardwood.

So this is how that went...

Before. I don't think I can fully express in words how much I can't stand cheap laminate flooring. And these were the cheapest of the cheap. Popped joints, chipped edges, scratches, dings, scuffs, and the awful installation didn't help it either.





Don't you love the nice transition strip(s)? Painted wood with silicone on one side (which is grimy and impossible to clean properly), and a nice metal strip, held in place with dozens of THREE INCH screws.



Not only did they not stagger the plywood, they also installed it over the same seams as the previous 1/4" layer. WHY?



The plywood came up easily because they nailed it down with DRYWALL NAILS. Yup. And you can tell by this one sheet how much of a crappy job they did by the location and quantity of nails used. Some sheets had a ridiculous amount (like 9 nails for a 12" square), and others had just a handful for a 4x8 sheet. They also randomly threw-in a few screws here and there.



The first peek at the floor shows off a few issues...



Floor stripped and swept:



And yes it looks exactly like this in person. It looks BAD. There's all kinds of carpet pad residue (who on Earth would want a carpet in the dining room??? Eww). Tons of large gaps (some that are nearly 1/4"), and a generally sickly looking colour. HOWEVER, under that, the wood looks to be fairly decent. I will refinish it providing that I can find a way to putty the cracks with something.





I will also have to get creative with some patching in several (at least 8) places.





In this room they made no effort to rewire in a non-destructive way (unlike the office, where they passed the wires just far enough to hide it with the baseboards).

Office Floor Demo

Alright, I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I LOVE demolishing things. I've really been itching to tear out all the crappy laminate and sub-floor (plywood) on the main floor (Office, Living Room, Dining Room).

I started tearing out a few of the laminate "boards" last night (even though I still had the bed and the computer desk in the room). So this morning (just a few hours ago), I removed the bed, and other items from the room, but I left the computer desk (which is currently just a folding card table), and a rolling "under-bed" box full of art and paper (it weighs a ton and I can't lift it alone).

Lucky for me, they had a lot of pieced-together sections for the sub-floor, and I was able to just move things over to pull out the floor. I was also lucky that the plywood pieces were just barely tacked down with a few nails (6-7 on a 4x8 sheet).

The only down sides are that the floor is coated in adhesive (looks almost like dried yellow glue, but I'm sure that's not what it is, and that the floor gaps are fairly large in places (most are 1/8 with some as large as the full tongue ~3/8).

Otherwise the floor isn't too butchered (I know for a fact that the dining room floor will need a bunch of repairs). There's one place with a saw cut about 12" long, but it's with the wood grain and I can putty it and hide it.

I also pulled the rest of the baseboards.

Here's where I decided to grab the camera. 90% of the laminate is off (some left at the bottom), some foam sheets still there, and 1/4" plywood showing.



First peek at the original birch hardwood floor. Note that there was also a sheet of 1/4" fiberboard (similar to a light MDF) under the 1/4" Fir plywood. Neither was hard to remove, with just a few ribbed drywall nails holding it down.



Two detail shots where you can see the adhesive, and the original orangey birch peeking through. You can clearly see that this stuff was spread thinly with a notched trowel. I have no idea if this was for some kind of carpet, linoleum, or laminate.





Here you can see where I just dragged the desk over. You can also see the new phone and cable outlet that I had installed months ago for the PC hookups and/or TV if this later becomes a media room (or if I switch back to cable internet).

Eventually I'd like to get one of those big old oak desks for the computer. The kind that's made of nice wood and built to last.



All the plywood removed, but one piece of baseboard left. Also note that the original paint colour in this room was a very deep reddish brown. Almost a crimson. It was also painted before the baseboards were put in, since you can see the brush marks. Yep, that's right! The entire room/house would have originally been painted with a 4" bristle brush. Pretty wild that paint rollers weren't around at that time yet. I also can't quite imagine how dark this room would have looked. Dark red with dark orange woodwork, and a deep reddish brown ceiling to match (the beadboard ceiling were dark reddish-orange brown).



Some areas are bare wood, others have some kind of papery residue, and there's traces of adhesive everywhere.









Overall the floor isn't too bad. It's not nearly bad enough that I'd cover over it again, but I definitely want to try to fill the gaps with something before refinishing them. I know the filler will likely crack or crumble, but I really want fewer gaps in the main floor. Upstairs bothers me less because it's painted and will get less traffic.