Farewell, Kitchen Floors

Today we decided to remove the original kitchen floor. I had hoped to keep it, but after removing around 10 layers of vinyl, linoleum, and tile to get to it, the actual floor was riddled with rot and nail holes, which makes for a costly repair. Here’s what the kitchen looked like pre-renovation.

The kitchen pre-renovation looking towards the living room.

The pre-renovation kitchen looking from the living room towards the side door.

Here’s the kitchen as of this afternoon. The ceiling beam is where they had combined two rooms at some point. I’m guessing these were the original kitchen and dining room. We are going to scrap about half of the floor and use the other half to patch sections around the house.

The gutted kitchen looking towards the living room.

The gutted kitchen looking towards the side door.

So where are these damaged areas? Water leaked pretty much everywhere in the home that’s possible! This includes under the sinks, refrigerator, and clothes washer. I’m also removing the original HVAC floor registers, so the floors will need to be patched in those locations. A section of the floor in the master bedroom also had to be removed to replace the rotted subfloor. This house clearly has some water management issues!

The kitchen hardwoods will be used to patch damaged sections of flooring, like here in the master bedroom.

Fixing the damage is not really a solution to the problem, however. Future water issues will be prevented by installing new gutters, improving site drainage to direct water away from the foundation, installing an encapsulated crawlspace, and installing a new drain pan for the washing machine.