Eye Diy

Last day of demolition!

By Ryan Shervill September 12th, 2011

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So…the cabinets are gone, walls are down, insulation gone, and the house is an empty shell…except for the flooring.
The first job was to tackle the kitchen floor, and let me tell you: It was waaaay more work than I was expecting. The kitchen floor was sheet linoleum glued down to ¼” ply, which was in turn stapled, nailed, AND screwed down onto the 5/8€³ subfloor.

It’s funny though, of all the fancy modern tools at my disposal, the one thing that worked better than anything for pulling up that floor was a 50 year old garden fork. It could be wedged under the plywood while (mostly) missing the fasteners, then lifted to break up the sheet.

The carpet in the rest of the house was just a little easier. It was just cut into manageable sizes with my utility knife

And rolled up to be brought to the bin

Now….something I don’t have pics of, but wish I did, was the tiled front entry. What a NIGHTMARE! When I laid that tile I did it to last…..which means I was essentially fighting myself. My floor was ½” ply screwed every 4” into the subfloor, topped with mortar, topped with ceramic tile. The tile was easily dealt with with the sledge, but then I was looking at 8 million screws….covered with mortar. I couldn’t rip them up, and I couldn’t unscrew them (as the heads were buried under/filled with mortar), but it had to come up.

I ended up just cutting the entire assembly (including subfloor) and prying up that whole section, then replacing the 5/8 ply.  Anyway, the flooring was loaded into the now overflowing bin (Like I said early on, always order larger than you think!) and Simcoe Disposal was called out to take it away.

 

Tool of the day! Believe it or not, an old garden fork saved the day.

So: That wraps up stage 1. We’ve spent a bunch of time and energy pulling stuff out of the house…
time to start bringing stuff in. Check back first of the week, things are gonna start to happen!

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