I'm learning!

So if you ask anyone, I'm not a manual labor kind of gal. I craft. I can paint. I can occasionally pick up heavy things with a lot of help and a few choice words. So these past couple days, as my dad says "is surprising that I haven't bowed out yet." I'm not sure if I should be glad I passed expectations, or be sad because they're so low in the manual labor department. All in all, though, I'm learning!

One such example is when Mike tried to take up the tile. Apparently, it turned into quite a larger project than anticipated.

Both he and his dad tried to take it up, but after much labor it only looked like this. UH OH. This is especially true because now we had an unlevel floor because of the carpet removal.

Considering the plan was to lay down laminate hardwood-finish flooring, this was a major problem. Good thing Mike is a Project Manager and spends his time brainstorming such problems! So instead of taking of the tile, we chose to lay down subflooring where the carpet had been pulled up to level the floor.

So for the next 4 hours or so, Mike and his dad cut each board and drilled them down. Make sure you don't just drill in the perimeter of the board. Drill it down throughout the entire board - otherwise that's how you get creaky, uneven floors. Also, Mike made note of the height difference between the tile and bought the appropriate width of plywood.

To fill in the holes that Mike and his dad created when trying to chip up the tile, we used Floor Patch from Ace Hardware to fill it in. Essentially, it's like cement. Make sure you pack it well into the area and smooth it out with the trowel. Mike had to do it twice because it bubbled up a little (we assume air was caught in between the layers). Also, make sure you don't step in it while it's drying - WHOOPS.

So after this little hiccup of tile removal, it ended well. The next post will go through how we then attempted to lay down the laminate floors over the subflooring and tiled area (and of course, the hiccups that went along with that project).

P.S. Everyone should be impressed with what I've learned and that I actually understood what happened throughout this process (even though I'm sure Mike would be way more technical)!