Floor Update

Today we moved the refrigerator out of the kitchen into the family room. Then Mary made a huge pot of soup while I worked on pulling up all the thresholds and the vinyl edge molding. The strategy is that Mary will make up a week's worth of food that we can microwave piecemeal while the stove is out of commission. I wanted to start cutting out the floor today, but Mary doesn't want all the linoleum dust flying around while she is cooking.

We still have a fair bit to do before we can really get down to it:

• Pull the stove and dishwasher out of the kitchen.
• Make some test measurements to figure out whether we need to cut the first row of boards narrow.
• Test the table saw we set up yesterday.
• Set up the compound miter saw.

We hope to do all this tomorrow, and start tearing out the old floor.

Before we finish, we'll have these issues to address:

- There is ceramic tile on the floor in the entrance hallway. It is glued over hardwood. We're thinking seriously of putting the new laminate floor in that hallway as well. We'll have to pull up the ceramic tile, and it may be difficult to do so without damaging the hardwood floor underneath. Even though we don't intend to use that hardwood floor, it would be nice to preserve it as a future option or for future owners of the house.

- We still have to buy pressboard to put on top of the subfloor and underneath the laminate floor. They don't sell it at Orchard Supply, and the gentleman there suggested we buy it at Lowe's, since what they have at Home Depot is supposedly of inferior quality. But it has been raining and we don't want a new purchase of wood to get wet, as it'll have to dry completely before we can install it. And we won't really know what the pressboard looks like or how it is installed until we remove the old one. So we'll probably have to pull out the old first, then pause to consider the next step.

- We'll need wood or fiberboard molding to replace the old vinyl molding. Mary will probably paint it to match the walls while I'm working on the floor. But some of the molding will go underneath cabinets and it should have an oak veneer to match or complement the cabinets. So we'll have to go shopping for two different kinds of molding before the floor is completely stable and the job done. But I don't want the lack of molding in-hand to block progress tearing out the old floor.