Yesterday felt super productive. We prepped the walls for painting, which included patching a bedroom that appeared to have been used as a thumbtack pincushion for several decades. We also patched some larger, more prominent areas that had peeling paper or other large mysterious gaps.

The exciting part was the kitchen demo, which we didn’t even start until about 6 pm last night. That’s when our crew was off work and able to lend a hand. We used a combination of hammering, kicking, crowbars, and sawsall to take out the upper cabinets and main countertop/sink area. Our crew did an amazing job, with Dave receiving the “He-man Award for Outstanding Application of Hulk Smash”, and Mary earned the “Most Colorful Curses while Deploying a Crow Bar” award. Laura won the “Feminism” award for best use of sawsall.

I didn’t think we would get to the floor. It was clearly several layers of linoleum that looked like a huge challenge to remove. We couldn’t clearly count the layers from the side view, but they totalled at least an inch high, which did not set up a good transition from hardwood floor to the kitchen – major trip hazard there.

Since the kitchen countertop & cabinets came out pretty well, we decided to attack the flooring as well. We removed the uppermost layer of linoleum (which included a layer of plywood). Then, after that came up, we attacked ANOTHER layer of linoleum & plywood. There was a total of 3 layers of linoleum and plywood on top of the subfloor. When we got to the last one, which appears to be the original from 1955, we decided to stop there. That layer will make a great base for our new cork flooring, plus we didn’t want to rile up the structural layer below.