Kitchen and Dining Room Floors Ready for Refinishing

There was linoleum flooring in the kitchen and after pulling it up months ago it revealed some pretty serious water damage in areas.  The majority of it will be covered by the kitchen cabinets, but there were some holes that I wanted eliminated and the floors in the most worn areas just felt spongy.  In my opinion not a good surface to lay my kitchen cabinets.

Since I had enough wood I decided to patch the most worn areas and all the boards with holes.  It took two days.  The first day I worked with my normal arsenal of tools: circular saw and JobMax tool, but it turned out my neighbor that rip the boards for me did not rip them narrow enough, so those tools proved to be somewhat useless and I was not producing an acceptable finished look.

Months ago I purchased a table saw, but was scared to use it the first time without someone knowledgeable on hand.  Fortunately that same neighbor came to the house and gave me a quick lesson.  With my crash course under my belt I was able to make faster work of the kitchen floors.  I can’t wait to get my workbench and miter saw to the house.  I’m going to be scared of myself with what I will do with proper tools.

The sub floor in part of the dining room was gone or rotten from water damage (most likely culprit a leaking radiator).  Once again I started ripping out before taking a before picture.  To get past the rot I had to take up about 20″  in width of flooring and almost the full length of the side wall.

The original sub-floor was laid in a diagonal with 6″ wide planks.  I did not want to disrupt the oak flooring that runs parallel to the front of the house, so I cut just past the rot.  I needed to create an anchoring point between the floor joist.  Because the electric, water, and GAS lines were run in that channel I didn’t have much space to work with, I took a scrap piece of 2×10, cut it to 14″ lengths, laid it flat on each end of my openings and anchored it.

Flooring comes in 4’x8′ sheets, so I had Home Depot rip a piece down in 20″ strips, which gave me the ability to transport it to my house.  I’m still amazed by how much I can haul in my PT Cruiser.  Crossing my fingers it keeps running at 102k plus miles.  The area removed was approximately 11′ long so the first, 8′ piece was a piece of cake to install.  The second had to be cut in a diagonal and was a bit harder, but I cheated by laying the board down, going down in the basement and drawing a cut line with a pencil.  With the angle set it was just a matter of getting the right length.

With the patch completed Baker, Bauer, and Fish HVAC company was able to return and run the last air duct line.  Now the floors are ready for Bob and Trish on the 5th.  Back to painting and tile floors.