Digital Analogue: Ok, new plan

February 13, 2006

Ok, new plan

I've been saying for a while that the plan was to pull up the existing vinyl tile in my kitchen, which is in terrible condition, and replace it with nice new linoleum (by which I mean real linoleum).

Tonight, my curiosity finally got the better of me, and I pulled up a couple squares of the old stuff to see what the floor underneath was like. And, underneath the tile and the backing board and the black sticky stuff and a layer of what appears to be card stock, is the exact same hardwood floors as in the rest of the house. With varnish on, even, although some of that's going to come off in the course of removing the floor above it. But, from what I can tell, it's in pretty good condition.

So, maybe linoleum in the future. But for now, even a badly-finished wood floor would be better than the awful crud that is there. So, new plan.

"How dare the government make a moral judgement over you? You're supposed to be doing that over the woman!" --Jason Jones, The Daily Show

Posted by blahedo at 3:22am on 13 Feb 2006

Comments

ohh! Lucky you! I really need to get by sometime, check out the new digs, and give Nutmeg a good pat. How's the unpacking going? Posted by Chelsea at 9:10pm on 13 Feb 2006

You might want to take some care. I lot of older tile is made from asbestos. It's not a huge concern, but you don't want to be taking tile of an unknown composite up and then breaking it into little pieces while not wearing a mask. But that's if it's even asbestos... Posted by Mark at 9:31am on 14 Feb 2006

WOW! Congrats! We had a similar experience this weekend. In K's office, we have carpet over some kind of vinyl? tile/linoleum. We picked it up to see if we could and found a similar cardboard-y like material under it and wood floor under that.

We just lifted up enough to say, "hey, maybe we should try to refinish that floor this spring too!" We can't tell how hard it will be ot get all the adhesive and paper-like stuff up.

How much did you lift and what did you notice as far as how much glue was there?

Good luck! And a *lift of the glass* cheers to you and your newfound wood floor! *grin* -j. Posted by julietta at 9:51am on 14 Feb 2006

It's 9-inch vinyl tile. What that means is that I can walk into a flooring store, start out, "I currently have some 9-inch vinyl tile in my kitchen, and—", and they immediately cut me off and say, "Ooh, then they probably have asbestos in them." So. For just pulling up a few tiles, I "only" wore a breather mask and goggles. When I get around to pulling up the whole kitchen, there'll be plastic over the doorway, fans, etc. The good news is, a lot of the damage from asbestos comes from long-term repeated exposure, i.e. for people who rip up floors for a living, so basic precautions should be sufficient for me.

In terms of removing the papery stuff, I think my plan is to use crowbars and stuff to lift all the rest first—letting the papery stuff protect the wood—and then use scrapers to remove that last bit. The paper isn't bonded to the varnish, it's just stuck to it, and I don't have glue patterns to deal with, so it's a fair bit of scraping but I don't think it'll be too bad.

Posted by blahedo at 11:37am on 14 Feb 2006