Laboring on Memorial Day

After seeing what was below the subfloor in the front living room with Kevin last weekend, I was curious to see if it continued into the front bedroom, hallways, and back bedroom. This weekend's soundtrack was "One Man Wrecking Machine" by Guster and my body is just now rebelling after the punishment that I put it through, but it was worth it.

The hardwood beauty continued into the front bedroom (for a before picture check out the one from my last post with Kevin sitting on the carpet pile) but unfortunately the hallway into the kitchen wasn't so lucky. They had sawed off the hardwood in order to repair joists and have laid a few layers of subfloor in their place.

After seeing what was in the front of the apartment, part of me wanted to start digging in the back bedroom too. But having felt how high the floor rose above the hallways at the entry, I knew it wouldn't be easy. Kevin had unscrewed a test patch in the back right corner of the plywood after we had removed the carpet. What we discovered was only linoleum, cardboard, and more plywood beneath the first subfloor. The first question that I needed to answer was whether there was anything at all worth digging towards. So it took me roughly a half-hour to get to the bottom from our original test patch.

Once I got to the bottom and determined that there was something there worth the effort of getting down to, I was able to measure how far below the top layer of subfloor the hardwood was. It turns out that it was  just over 1 1/2 inches!

From the bottom up, the hardwood had particle board (which it looks like was absorbing any moisture and saving the hardwoods) then plywood cover by a cardboard underlayment and linoleum then yet another round of plywood and linoleum, which Kevin and I had already taken off along with the carpet padding and carpet last weekend. So really with the carpet, carpet padding and first layer of linoleum, it was even more than 1 1/2 inches.

Luckily my dad gave me an old circular saw before he left for vacation, so now that I knew how deep to set it I could really make a dent in the subfloor. I cut it into strips that would be easier to pry from, unfortunately every layer of subfloor also had staples, nails, and screws which still made this a long and drawn out task. 

One board looks like it'll need replaced so far, but after finishing the front rooms and everything that I did in the back bedroom I called it a day after getting this far. When my body recovers, the rest of this subfloor is toast. To be continued..