I purchased a new dishwasher, which led into me replacing my kitchen floor. I didn’t want to put this nice appliance in with such a hideous floor, one that had been there since quite possibly the mid 1980’s.
I take pride in my abilities to do manual labor, but my body has been saying no to such ventures more and more to the point where I just need to stop trying and start giving into what my body is telling me.
The existing floor is (or should I say was) was compromised of two layers of linoleum. Full of bumps and holes and all of the bad parts of the 80’s. I first wanted to go with a classic black and white checkerboard look. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a supplier that had what I was looking for that was as durable as I wanted. That’s when I made the choice to upgrade to tile, an area that I’ve never worked in before.
We found a tile we liked, and since my girlfriend’s place has a tile kitchen I knew I wanted it to have a heating system. So I pulled a very expensive trigger.
I wanted to do the prep work, so they could just come in and lay the tile. I “thought” I was proceeding properly, but learned yesterday I was wrong. Part of our contract was for me to remove the appliances, trim and ensure the subfloor was at least 5/8″ thick. I missed a little detail though. They wanted it to be in OSB.
The subfloor of my entire home is comprised of what is commonly called chipboard. It’s essentially dust from woodworking that’s glued together and compressed to form a dimensional, workable piece of wood. It has a couple of real negatives. Water will cause it to disintegrate, and it isn’t as solid as other forms of sub flooring, something needed and in most cases required for tile.
My first step in preparing the area was to remove the way the water line for the ice maker was configured and install a “box” in the wall for it. Oddly, while doing this I discovered that someone had already drilled a hole for this purpose but never completed the task. Someone had just drilled a hole in the floor and ran a line through it.
Last weekend, I began the real preparations as I thought they would be. My neighbor helped me pickup some 4’x8′ sheets of 1/4″ luan plywood. This is commonly used to make flooring smoother or increase the thickness of the floor. I was using it for the latter purpose.
I removed all of the appliances, sans the dishwasher and was going to begin on removing the existing flooring on Saturday morning. I woke to discover my wonderful girlfriend had removed the vast majority of it while I was sleeping.
We both felt that the lower layer of flooring was much better looking than the one above it. I wonder why they put new flooring down that was less durable and definitely not as visually pleasing?
I took all of the old stuff downstairs, and cleaned the floor. We noticed some spots seemed to have black mold on them, probably from water leaks over the years. So I bought some mold killing sprays and sprayed them down.
Then I brought that luan up and called it a night. I only had 1 day left, but those activities alone had taken all the strength I had out of me. My injured back was also screaming at me.
So I laid 2 sheets of the luan down, removed the dishwasher and thought they would just lay the rest of the luan down. Boy was I wrong.
Now I’ll be spending roughly $500 more on this project, not due to what I did – but because of what my body couldn’t do. Something my soul used to love doing. My soul needs that harmony back in in some way. I just need to learn the lines of what I can and cannot do.