Strips Linoleum!

Flaky Odd blogger returns. Nope, I wasn’t off fishing or wishing. I was emptying bedrooms; pulling up carpet, stripping linoleum and baseboards; and swinging a paintbrush. 

First, a little side information. Years ago, I talked dearly departed Joe into replacing the carpet in our house with ceramic tile. It looks great, is easy to care for, and is very pet friendly. He agreed but wanted to keep the carpet in the bedrooms and the hardwood floors in the front foyer and in the hallway between the bedrooms. It was a good compromise. The hardwood floor made for a nice contrast to the tile. Fortunately, the bedroom carpeting was very good carpeting and could withstand cleaning on a monthly basis. (If you have dogs, you know that if they have an accident or throw-up, it will always be on the rug or the carpeting.) The carpeting lasted us a lot of years, but nothing lasts forever, so I understood when my carpet cleaner sadly hung his head and announced it was time to let the carpet go. Moving forward, it made sense to replace the bedroom carpeting with hardwood floors.

Our original plan was to do Cole’s room first and my room later. This plan had a lot to do with money. Cole’s room was our first priority because the carpet in his room had more stains than the one in my room (he counted); he had waited his whole entire life to have hardwood flooring in his room; and he was willing to share in the cost. Fortunately, this plan was aborted when a contractor friend offered to match Cole’s choice of hardwood with hardwood left over from another job for my room. We could save money by doing all the upfront work ourselves. How hard could it be?

Well, for starters, some people find beautiful wood floors under old carpet—Remember, back in the day, wall-to-wall carpeting was the end-all—but we found linoleum. First lesson learned. Second lesson: Linoleum is very sharp. I was in the process of sharing this fact when my teen chiseled off and sent a flying piece of linoleum directly at my nose. The suggestion of filling this new nose piercing with a small gem did not go over well. The chisel went on top of the refrigerator.

The next suggested method for removing the linoleum was to pour hot water on it and let the water dissolve the adhesive under the tile. I know, right? Any person who has ever tired to remove a price tag with hot water would doubt this method, but we gave it our best shot in a small corner of the room. Fail. The tile remained stuck, but the hot water flowed through the floor into my basement. The basement does not need any more water. We abandoned this method. 

Next, I came up with the idea to use an iron to melt the adhesive behind the tile…and it might have worked if I owned an iron. The irony is, I’ve never owned an iron…but for some reason I always think I do. Some part of me must object to wrinkled clothing; I don’t indulge it. This frustrates my sweet mother to no end when she visits. She requests an iron (which I swore before her visit that I owned), I look for it and then once again admit defeat. She bought me an iron once but ended up taking it home. If she’d left it, I could report on how well it worked on the linoleum. But since she didn’t, all I can report is that a curling iron didn’t do the trick, and the smell was enough to make me glad that I didn’t own an iron. We rented a tile stripper.

Unless you are a smartass 19-year-old boy, you know a tile stripper is a machine that lifts tile off the floor. When it was my turn to strip, I put my safety glasses firmly in place and, without further ado, used it to rip linoleum up off the floor. FUN. So much more rewarding than separating egg whites or trying to figure out if the pasta is past al dente or not. Sweeping, carefully bagging it up and hauling it away was less fun. If I become a professional stripper, I’ll hire someone else to do that part.

Let’s recap. At this point we’ve emptied bedrooms, bought and hauled hardwood flooring, torn up carpet and removed the linoleum. Next, we need to paint my room and repair and paint a wall in Cole’s room. He made the executive decision to remove his bed from the ceiling, as it is bolted to the ceiling and wall.

Are you curious as to what paint I chose for my bedroom after two years of deliberation? Did we manage to have everything ready to go when the installers arrived last Friday? Are we doing a hardwood happy dance? Will we use Bona to clean our floors? Will my fingernails ever be the same? 

Stay tuned for part two of this post. This flaky Odd blogger is going to bed.

Odd Loves Company.

 

The Linoleum

Chisels and scrappers are no match for Linoleum

Cole taking down his ceiling bed. We hoped the wall it was attached to would not come down with it. The leg was used for support during the take down.

Shop Vac how I do love thee.