The Floor Project Has Begun.....

Over the weekend, I decided to peel back the ugly, ugly, UGLY press-on floor JUST in the area where the doorway is from the kitchen to the hallway.

Lo and behold, the linoleum underneath seemed to be in good shape, AND with a fun pattern: Sort of a seafoam green with whitish streaks in the background, and colored rectangles of red, yellow, blue and green in the foreground.

In a remarkable show of restraint, I did not proceed, awaiting the colonel's return. Imagine my suprise, when he also thought it looked cool, and suggested that we attack it with scraper and heat gun. So we went rushing off to Lowes to buy us a nice heat gun and got to work.

Now, 12 square feet later, we have a good idea of what we are dealing with. The big problem seems to be the adhesive residue from the tacky press-on floor, but working dilligently with lighter fluid is paying off (and also making the people at the Red Apple look at me as if I am a terrorist, as we are going through a lot of it. If anyone has a better idea, please let me know)

HOPEFULLY, all of the floor is in as good a condition as what we have seen so far, but one never knows. The previous owners were not one to just frivilously lay a new floor, so I'm hoping that this was just a wild hare on their part, and we will find a nice pristine complete floor when we are done. If not, we'll just skip off to Lowes again and buy us some new tiles. But right now, this is cheap and cheerful. And sort of fun to do. Plus it provides hours of entertainment when the animals get stuck on the gluey part.