One day last month… I decided to put my work pants on and tear up the linoleum in the kitchen.
I thought to my self “how hard could this be? Can’t be any worse than pulling up carpet, stripping and refinishing the wood floor in my office…”
All I have to say… is what the hell was I thinking????!!!
It was hard.
First off… you can’t strip the backing of linoleum off of wood floors. I tried. It’s sticky. (I normally use citristrip… it’s the safest kind I can find, but it did no good) Instead, good old dawn dish soap and boiling hot water did the trick. So about 1,000 buckets full of boiling soapy water… the floors were clean. And I was one muddy, smelly mess….because you know what’s under there…. tar. I was cleaning tar. With soap and water. Bleh.
Re-doing a kitchen is a little bit different than a room. You can’t just use another kitchen (unless you’re lucky enough to have two.) The fridge has to go somewhere. The stove has to go somewhere and surprisingly…. I have quite a bit of moveable furniture in there. So the stove lived in the living room, the refrigerator lived wherever it could go without blocking someone or say a dog in a completely different part of the house with no escape. Not saying I did that. And then there was the bakers pantry and the mudroom. All part of the process. Let’s just say it wasn’t the weekend job I was hoping for…. especially when the weekend was Memorial Day and there are a million and a half other things happening.
So after all the cleaning….. comes the sanding.
Now, I have to say sanding sounds daunting. It’s my favorite part. Makes me feel like the Hulk. Though it does all the work and you kind of half to let it go where it wants to. I rent an orbital sander. After 3 different grits of paper… it was done.
And then… polyurethane. I use the quick dry stuff. It’s pretty amazing. You can walk on it in socks within a couple hours. Unless you spill half a bucket… then you have to wait a little longer. Not that I would know or anything… (hear the sarcasm in my typing?)
And so it’s done. They have had a hundred kids running all over them. There’s already dust and dirt. you can see it in the photos… but I won’t point it out. It’s like they have been this way forever. It didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted. It’s growing on me. The wood underneath was worn. It’s 115 years old and has been through who knows what before I got to it. And have been covered in tar for who know how long. Let’s just say… it has a lot of character.
But they are done. They are off my list…
Now…
Paint the living room…
