Flooring Woes

I am SO glad that I read articles about how to approach your renovation. Generally speaking, the two biggest problems that people face in renovations are:

1. Budgeting too close to their maximum.
2. Expecting the job to be finished far earlier than possible.

Well, we have run into our first "contract extension" issue.

Because I hadn't mentioned that I decided I would go with tile flooring instead of laminate, our contractor (okay, time to call him by name), Solomon, had estimated a completion time much earlier. 

In order to lay tile flooring, the floor has to be immaculately level. Otherwise the tiles may crack or loosen over time. This is an older home, so it uses laminate throughout. Laminate has the advantage of being malleable enough to adhere to an imperfect floor.

Going with a tiled floor means many, many, MANY extra steps to prepare the floor, and then the added time it takes to lay tile down. We are talking at least a week to two weeks extra wait time.

Yes, there's more work but most of the extra time is waiting for various layers of treatment on the floor to dry before the tiles can even be laid.

First step: Taking Off the Old Laminate. 

Well, not as easy as it sounds. Usually you can just lift it off and just scrape whatever remainders there are of the glue underneath. But this laminate is apparently really old. So it will take some substantial elbow grease to scrape the glue off the floor. That's the weekend project for me and my brother.

You can see where the concrete is and where the laminate glue is very thick. The scraping process doesn't pull the glue off very easily. They come out in small pieces at a time. This is going to take some real work!

And interestingly enough, we found a piece of the old laminate used before this one was laid:

Maybe it's just my vintage self talking, but I think it kinda prefer the old look! It's going to be interesting what is under that piece of laminate considering it's even older than the one we are removing now.

Step Two: Concrete to Level the floor

Well considering what a load of work the flooring will be, I will probably show you what is being done when the time comes to do it all. So this is just a mental bookmark so that I know where I left off!