Dust Bowl

Things were being attacked with such ferocity last Saturday I'm pretty sure our foundation is still vibrating, but I'm going to break the process up into a bit more manageable chunks here. So! First things first: The dreaded kitchen in all it's linoleum'd glory.

One last look

Tearing out the carpet in the dining room showed us that the linoleum in the kitchen was glued to a 1/2" thick particle board, which was stapled and maybe glued onto the subfloor below. Trepidation: Engage.

Some YouTube research on Nate's part brought us lots of info, though, and pretty quickly we knew we'd need another set of hands and the circular and reciprocating saws stored in said hands' garage.

Nate and his dad spent about 6 hours scoring 2x2 squares with the circular saw set to 1/2", wrenching up those squares, pulling/flattening staples, and then chipping and smoothing any particle board chunks that wanted to stay glued to the subfloor. Then, because cabinets were installed on top of the particle board, the reciprocating saw had to be used to carefully 'edge' along the bottom of the cabinets. Exhausting and dusty - and I do mean DUSTY - work.

First piece out!

Nate's stove top dust art.

 But when all was said and done, there wasn't nearly as much glue as we'd feared, and moving the appliances wasn't quite as much of a bear as anticipated (although living without a stove or dishwasher this week is not my favorite). The subfloor was sealed before the particle board and linoleum sandwich (yummy.) went down, and not having to scrape much meant no need to re-seal.

Seriously. Look at that sawdust.

It was a pretty brutal day for those two gentlemen (and for me too, but that's for another day), and I couldn't be more thankful that they put in the research, labor, and time to knock it out.

Last piece out! Victory!