The Onion

When we moved in the main floor had 2 different types of flooring, awesome (crappy) wood laminate, and blue carpet.

Laminate

Blue Carpet (trust me, it's blue)

With the tearing down and out of the wall between the bathroom and the den came the pretty much complete demo of the den, including tearing up the floor.

Pulling back the carpet revealed some of those sticky vinyl floor tiles that were popular back in the early 90's.

 

 

This sticky tile was stuck to a full covering of 1/4" underlay plywood, which Derek had a fun time puling up.  After bringing up the first sheet of plywood (which is oddly only 4'x4') we were greeted with nothing better than the 1970's in the form of a vinyl sheet.

 

Me, being the curios person that I am, started peeling back a bit of this awesome flooring to take a peak at what was underneath.  What was there, do you ask?  More vinyl!!  This time in a wood pattern more reminiscent of the 60's. 

 

 

Now, we weren't born yesterday, so we know that even back in the day when this house was built the flooring of choice wasn't vinyl sheet, so we knew there had to be at least one more layer under there.

So what did we find?

Linoleum!

Here you can see the progression of the floor.  Carpet, sticky tiles, 70's vinyl, 60's vinyl, then the checkerboard linoleum.

I have to take a second here to tell you one of Derek's favourite jokes.

What do you get when you throw a grenade in a Parisian kitchen?
Linoleum Blownapart!

Ha, get it?  Linoleum Blownapart?  Napoleon Bonaparte?  Yeah, I know, it's Derek's joke.

Unfortunately I didn't get a photographic journey of how the floor came up in the bathroom, but Derek assures me that not only was it multi-layered, but it was also so tacky it was fantastic.  The bathroom had at least as many layers of flooring, but even more layers of 1/4" underlay between them.  I did get a shot when he first started pulling up the laminate though.

As of right now, all of the walls and floors (down to the subfloor) are gone.  I went out to get groceries and came home to this.

 

Zombie Demo crew for hire?  Frank!

 

An hour or two of cleanup later, it looks a little something like this.

Yes, this used to be a bathroom.

That's all for now.  We picked up a ton of lumber and all the plywood we need to strengthen and level the floor and build the new bathroom walls today, so I'll update again when there's actually something to look at because "Oh look!  The floor!" over and over might get a little redundant.