Nick took preliminary after-new-kitchen/pre-new-floor pictures and we pretty well decided that NOW was the weekend we would begin tearing out the floor. Our target date for tear-out completion was Sunday, March 18^th. Our Santa Clara Dump-It Campaign put us in Week One – so all of the old floor had to be at our curb no later than the morning of Monday, March 19^th.

How hard could tearing out a 12’x23’ floor be? This job should be a snap!

DAY TWO
Saturday, March 3^rd: We pulled off the vinyl baseboards and swept (why Ro insisted on sweeping first, we’ll never know). Nick made a hole by drilling into the LAYERS* of linoleum to see just how deep we would have to go to the subfloor.

*LAYERS: (1) The visible linoleum,  (2) identical color and pattern of linoleum, (3) first layer of underlayment,(4) layer of avocado green swirled pattern of linoleum, (5) layer of an avocado green AND Hershey chocolate brown swirly glue pattern of linoleum, and (6) another layer of underlayment.

Ro spent about 3 hours trying to pull up an area about 4’ x 2’ in area. Neither the linoleum, the nails, or Ro was going to give in. Alternating between using a crowbar & prybar [aka: "Wonderbar"] and hammer, Ro hammered and pried and grunted and groaned until she was nearly deaf (banging metal against metal with no baffles, can be quite loud). Fortunately her learning curve of pulling out the bathroom floor kicked in early, so she remembered to wear gloves, and kneel on towels so her knees wouldn’t give out.

At the 3-1/2 hour mark, Ro decided that I should "score" the flooring just to the subfloor. The upside would be that the leverage to pull up the pieces would be markedly easier if the floor had a place to "snap". The downside was that we discovered since we pulled out the cabinets during The Kitchen project, our flooring may or may not have contained asbestos, so we had to take certain precautions. First, all birds had to be in their room (including The Boy), all doors to all rooms in the back of the house had to be closed and towels were placed at the bottom of each of the closed doors. Second, we cranked the heat to heat up the house [energy crisis or no energy crisis] as we would have to turn the heater off - and until we could vacuum up the dust, we didn’t want it forced through the heating system. Third, we closed the drapes leading into the Home Theater to avoid having dust (at least a majority of it) going into the livingroom. Next, we opened up the kitchen door and the front door to have ventilation and Ro set a fan in the hallway to blow out anything that became airborne. Nick donned a safety mask and goggles, Ro got the h*ll out of the way and the floor was scored.

It took approximately 5 minutes for Nick to make cuts into one side of the kitchen floor. It took at least ½ hour for Ro to gather and dispose of the dust in the kitchen. We kept a water bottle close by for the rest of the project as the dust is only harmful when it become airborne, but is relatively harmless when not inhaled.

The next 5 hours went a lot more quickly and ¾ of the first side of the kitchen were nearly done by the time we called it a day.

DAY THREE:
Sunday, March 4^th: We woke up hurting, shoulders, knees, back and in Ro’s case hands (for the times with the hammer she whacked her hand holding the Wonderbar, rather than the Wonderbar itself). It was a rocky start but by around 2PM all of the 1^st side of the kitchen was pulled out and stacked neatly in the garage. It took approximately 4 more hours to pull out all of the staples, nails and chucks of SPACKLE (see Mr. Spackle) that were in the floor.

WEEKEND TWO, DAY FOUR:
Saturday, March 10^th: We decided to just move the refrigerator and stove into the livingroom, next to the kitchen cabinets – it was official, we became white trash that day. Not that there is anything wrong with a small refrigerator in a livingroom to hold assorted beverages, but to be able to make a sandwich, or a salad and a cocktail using the top of the stove as a counter, from the comfort of a sofa chair was just too alien for Ro. It was embarrassing for her when she had groceries delivered and the delivery guy asked, "where do you want them" and she pointed to the livingroom and our full-sized refrigerator was right there. Anyway for the rest of that day until we moved the refrigerator back to its’ home, we were lost. Countless times we would have to announce that "the refrigerator is NOT in kitchen". We had to take our flooring scoring precautions in order to score the second half of the floor.

DAY FIVE:
Sunday, March 11^th. Both sides of the kitchen floor where now torn out. A stack of floor debris was now in Nick’s pristine garage – and it was killing him! We knew we weren’t supposed to throw out anything at the curb for at least another week, and the smell of the old floor was awful. We decided to work as quickly as we could to prep the floor for the new linoleum.

DAY SIX:
Monday, March 12^th. Nick asked Ro if we could please clear out the garage, because it really, really smelled bad. She said "no, we might get a ticket". Nick screwed down the boards that were squeaking.

DAY SEVEN:
Tuesday, March 13^th: Nick asked Ro if we could please clear out the garage, because it really, really smelled bad. She said "no, we might get a ticket". Ro started wood puttying the larger holes that were left after pulling out the previous floor.

DAY EIGHT:
Wednesday, March 14^th: ^: Nick asked Ro if we could please clear out the garage, because it really, really smelled bad. Since she had been throwing out garbage in her office for the past few weeks (due to a RIF), she was in the mood and said, "Screw it [getting a ticket]! Let’s empty the garage!" Nick said, "YAY!"

Now the timing of the project was going to get tricky. We wanted to get the new floor installed before Ro went to visit her folks in Florida on March 30^th, because installing the linoleum really was a two-person project. Since the old floor was at the curb, we couldn’t park our vehicles on the street, so we both had to park in the driveway. Since we needed a big area to cut the linoleum, we needed to use the driveway, which had our vehicles parked on it because the street was full – so COME ON SANTA CLARA AND PICK UP THE GARBAGE!

DAY NINE:
Saturday, March 17^th: We went to Home Depot to buy some plywood underlayment. Very, very heavy stuff. Nick "measured twice and cut once" each section and we had a nice clean [feeling] new floor!

DAY TEN:
Sunday, March 18^th: We started screwing down the floor, and puttying the holes and seams. Ro got nervous that we might not get the linoleum installed on time – the weather forecast called for RAIN!

Santa Clara picked up and cleaned up our curb on Wednesday, March 21^st! Hooray!

DAY ELEVEN:
Friday, March 23^rd: Ro got on a roll and spackled nearly every hole, screwhead and seam, then sanded, then vacuumed the spackle dust, then spackled and sanded again. She stayed up into the early hours Saturday morning trying to get all of the dust off of the walls, wooden blinds, countertops so that we could lay the linoleum and glue it on clean surfaces.

DAY TWELVE:
Saturday, March 24^th: We went to Home Depot and picked out the linoleum we picked out (about 2 years ago). Ro discovered how heavy linoleum is when it is in one piece – pretty heavy. We also invested in an Armstrong Linoleum Floor Installation Kit – very advisable to use because if you screw up the floor (which would be really hard to do if you follow their instructions), you get up to 36 replacement yards of linoleum.

Weather was looking IFFY at best, so we had to move really fast. We took the linoleum out of the truck and put it into the garage, just in case it rained, then Nick moved his truck to the street. Inside, we laid down the tracing sheets over the entire kitchen floor, taped the sheets together, then traced our kitchen on the sheets. The whole taping, tracing process took about 20 minutes. When we went outside to sweep the driveway (we didn’t want rocks or anything to misshape the linoleum when we cut it), the sky was BLACK in the horizon, but was sunshiny on our block. Decision time: do we go for it, or wait for the rain to come (or not come) and risk putting off the project another day? We ran in and check the weather forecast on the computer, saw that we were "in the clear" at the last satellite reading, so we decided to go for it and hustle like we’ve never hustled before!

We swept the driveway, then ran in and picked up the linoleum and took it outside to the driveway and carefully laid it out. Nick thought that our driveway would look GREAT if it were "linoleumed" – but Ro said, "no".

Anyway, we had to hustle bringing out the stencil to the driveway, so even though we carefully tried to roll it and figure out the best way we would bring it outside (because we would have to figure out the best way to bring the linoleum back inside), time, and the latest satellite image wouldn’t allow for "careful". By the time we got outside, the sun had gone behind some storm clouds and the wind picked up. We were taping down the 12’x 22-1/2’ stencil as fast as the wind was picking it up! Nick started drawing the "reverse trace" around the stencil and Ro got the linoleum-cutting blade and starting cutting right behind him. It took about 35 minutes to get the whole piece cut and another 10 minutes to get the floor rolled up small enough to run it into the house. The sun came back out just when we were carrying the linoleum into the house.

After a few tense minutes of trying not to tear it & getting both sides of the one-sheet piece of linoleum (around a cabinet & ½ wall) into the kitchen, we did it! We decided to let the flooring get acclimated to the climate of the kitchen overnight, then we would glue it down the next day.

It started drizzling around ½ hour after we got the floor into the kitchen!

DAY THIRTEEN:
Sunday, March 25^th: We rolled up the floor into workable sections. Nick was the "glue applicator", and Ro was the "linoleum roller". After the floor was officially glued and spot cleaned with paint thinner (to get off the errant glue globs that occasionally happen), we were done – except for the installation of the baseboards. We carefully put the refrigerator and stove and free-standing cabinets back into the kitchen, then spent the rest of the day putting the Home Theater back in order, rediscovering that the refrigerator is in the kitchen, and what a difference the new floor made. Ro was happy that the kitchen project was finally going to be completed!

Cleaning Torture: One thing that put a damper on the project was the fact that Ro was unable to mop the new floor. The floor instructions stated that the floor should not be mopped for at least 5 days, and Nick didn’t want the floor mopped until after the baseboards and trim had been installed and chaulked (water-sealed).

Ro went to see her folks on Friday, March 30^th. Nick was unable to install the baseboards as he had hoped because our last (?) rain of the season came the week Ro was away. He was successful in finding brass heater registers that fit into the floor vents. We wanted to have oak registers, but even though they were very pretty and fit in our motif, we had to remember "The Boy" and his destructive tendencies – so indestructible brass it is!

While Ro was gone, Nick used one of the leftover cabinets from the Kraftmaid Kitchen Debacle to make a mini-bar. The top is made from some oak scraps laminated together. Amazing what can come from scraps.

DAY FOURTEEN:
Saturday, April 14^th: Nick started installing the baseboards that he had cut, coped, beaded and varnished!