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This is going to be boring but I have to vent. Except I'm too exhausted. I'll try.
We're having a summer of house improvements; new garage doors, new roof, painters coming to paint the outside...and a new kitchen floor. The off white lino is the bane of my life; it's at least 6 years old, probably as old as the house (14 years) and it looks dirty no matter how...oh, forget it. New floor. Right. We decided to go for hardwood. Until we got an estimate, we were going to do the computer room too, which is off the kitchen. The first estimate for..no, that's boring too. We said, to save some money, we'd prepare it; take off the baseboards, pull up the lino. They're coming on Thursday, so I took off most of the baseboards (skirting boards to us Brits) on Friday and today we finished and began to pull up the lino. It came off like wallpaper, leaving behind a liner and masses of adhesive. I began to sob piteously as it's 300 square foot of floor. My friend rang right then and suggested we call the flooring people to see how smooth it needed to be; I'd already gone on the net (my personal Mrs Beeton's) and ascertained that it was a pig of a job; scraping, boiling water etc, which didn't seem practical as it was wooden. However.
I rang and spoke to Mike. He said, in a puzzled, patient tone of voice, "You don't need to take up the lino."
"You told me to. You said I had to. You did, you did!" Accusing note in my voice.
"It will come up when you remove the chipboard and take it back to the mahogany sub flooring."
"Say what?"
"The sub floor."
"I don't under...DAVID! You talk to him."
Now see, in the houses we've lived in in England, flooring is planks that lie on joists. Or concrete. Maybe modern houses are like this one in Canada; wouldn't know.I now find out that the surface I was planning to spend days patiently getting smooth and adhesive free IS GETTING PULLED UP. Under it is more wood, proper wood, poplar or mahogany and it is on top of this that our Brazilian cherry will softly lie, never to be walked on (levitation lessons for everyone and the cats better keep their claws sheathed).
Well thanks a bunch for explaining it, Mike.
So, chortles of glee, once my rage had subsided and heigh ho, off to pull up the vast acres of chipboard. Of course, the lino does need to come off too. And of course the chip board comes up leaving behind hundreds of staples. Which need pulling up too.
I can barely type. My hands, my artistic, creative, writer's hands are clutched around a phantom mole wrench. Splinters have been shoved up my nails. I'm shaped like a hairpin as the only way to pull them up is from standing, bent at the waist.
I'm dead.
Just wanted to share.
We're having a summer of house improvements; new garage doors, new roof, painters coming to paint the outside...and a new kitchen floor. The off white lino is the bane of my life; it's at least 6 years old, probably as old as the house (14 years) and it looks dirty no matter how...oh, forget it. New floor. Right. We decided to go for hardwood. Until we got an estimate, we were going to do the computer room too, which is off the kitchen. The first estimate for..no, that's boring too. We said, to save some money, we'd prepare it; take off the baseboards, pull up the lino. They're coming on Thursday, so I took off most of the baseboards (skirting boards to us Brits) on Friday and today we finished and began to pull up the lino. It came off like wallpaper, leaving behind a liner and masses of adhesive. I began to sob piteously as it's 300 square foot of floor. My friend rang right then and suggested we call the flooring people to see how smooth it needed to be; I'd already gone on the net (my personal Mrs Beeton's) and ascertained that it was a pig of a job; scraping, boiling water etc, which didn't seem practical as it was wooden. However.
I rang and spoke to Mike. He said, in a puzzled, patient tone of voice, "You don't need to take up the lino."
"You told me to. You said I had to. You did, you did!" Accusing note in my voice.
"It will come up when you remove the chipboard and take it back to the mahogany sub flooring."
"Say what?"
"The sub floor."
"I don't under...DAVID! You talk to him."
Now see, in the houses we've lived in in England, flooring is planks that lie on joists. Or concrete. Maybe modern houses are like this one in Canada; wouldn't know.I now find out that the surface I was planning to spend days patiently getting smooth and adhesive free IS GETTING PULLED UP. Under it is more wood, proper wood, poplar or mahogany and it is on top of this that our Brazilian cherry will softly lie, never to be walked on (levitation lessons for everyone and the cats better keep their claws sheathed).
Well thanks a bunch for explaining it, Mike.
So, chortles of glee, once my rage had subsided and heigh ho, off to pull up the vast acres of chipboard. Of course, the lino does need to come off too. And of course the chip board comes up leaving behind hundreds of staples. Which need pulling up too.
I can barely type. My hands, my artistic, creative, writer's hands are clutched around a phantom mole wrench. Splinters have been shoved up my nails. I'm shaped like a hairpin as the only way to pull them up is from standing, bent at the waist.
I'm dead.
Just wanted to share.
