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All your base cabinets are belong to us
I didn't actually expect to get through all the base cabinets today, but working nonstop is good for getting a lot done. I learned that the specific name for our cabinet color is "jade green." I learned that there are two layers of linoleum on our floor, and that below the second (historically first) layer is wood flooring. Not exactly hardwoods, since they don't appear to be finished. They are covered with that black glue from whenever linoleum came out, so I have doubts about
being able to get it off, and further doubts about being able to refinish the wood if I did. More about that tomorrow. I learned that removing a countertop can be incredibly difficult, especially when the two halves are held together by four stainless steel bolts that are hidden under a layer of particle board. I learned that I'm going to have to learn a lot about repairing walls, putting on plaster and the like. But at the end of the day, the sink was out, the garbage disposal off, the countertop gone and the base cabinets removed. Tomorrow's goals: start looking at the floor situation.
I didn't actually expect to get through all the base cabinets today, but working nonstop is good for getting a lot done. I learned that the specific name for our cabinet color is "jade green." I learned that there are two layers of linoleum on our floor, and that below the second (historically first) layer is wood flooring. Not exactly hardwoods, since they don't appear to be finished. They are covered with that black glue from whenever linoleum came out, so I have doubts about
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5 comments:
Ahhh, the magikal black linoleum glue. I am fighting my own war with it right at this moment.
It probably is a memory hidden by the travails of our early adolescence, but you may dimly recall that the front bedroom had fake-wood-grain-vinyl tile flooring.
Well, guess what? It's still there. Buried under a layer of cheap carpet and padding. Like any contractor worth his meth-addled girlfriend and beer gut, the folks who put the carpet in the front room left the old vinyl floor in all its 1970s glory, and just nailed the tack strip through it and glued the padding right on top of it.
That seems to have been the modus operandi of every two-bit hood who did any work on this place, in fact. Leave the old for the antiquarians of the future to puzzle over. It has made the task of remodelling far harder, because unlike the troglydytes who worked on this place in the past, I actually give a shit about the end result.
Enough history. The real question at hand is, how do you get the vile crap off?
The answer is, you probably don't need to. If you're not painting the floor, or putting linoleum on top of it, I would leave it be. But if you did, get Jasco, as per this:
http://www.billrushing.org/20070917_bix_stripper_sucks.htm
You will laugh in knowing that this is the second-most-often hit page on my site, and on the second page of results for a Google search for "Bix Stripper". The text from the page that Google tosses up is paarticularly hilarious, and has probably not made me any friends at the Bix company.
Looks like you're doing well. Don't envy you the plaster patch job (you have real plaster, yes?). The "Big Orange Book" from Home Despot has some suggestions for working with plaster, and is a decent investment regardless of what you're doing on a home.
I think the plan is probably to peel off the two layers of linoleum, and then put down one of the new snap-together-you-floor surfaces. Laminate, which I've already done, or bamboo, if I don't need to nail/glue it—some of the engineered surfaces (like laminate) can just be floated, as we did in our sun room. This is all predicated on the assumption that we're not dealing with nice hardwood that's worth stripping and refinishing, etc. The truth is that that would put a complete halt to the whole thing since you don't do cabinets unless you've got a floor, and it would probably be three weeks before we could get someone to re-do the floors, if we could get the linoleum glue off at all.
This place is indeed real plaster, but it remains to be seen how much we'll need to do, or if I'm going to fake most of it with drywall. I hate plaster; you can't put anything in without it crumbling, and it manages to be both heavy and fragile, a terrible combo.
On a happier note, we'll all be at the lake for a week or more sometime between Aug. 1 and Aug 20. Want to come out and hang with your toothless nephew?
Bamboo is the environmentally better choice, but no one makes a snap-together version, sadly. Too bad - it looks good and is just about as hard as stone.
Do laminate. It's getting more expensive by the day, but it works very well (I've done most of the condo in it and it looks a hell of a lot better than it did). Costco sells an awesome laminate under the brand name "Harmonics", which is what I used. Pergo at 1/3 the price.
I am somewhat regretting not doing the whole place in tile, as that is freakin' indestructible - on the other hand, I can easily remove laminate. Tile would require a jackhammer.
Screw the potential hardwood; it'll still be there if you really get a boner to do anything with it, it probably doesn't exist anyway, and sanding/lacquering it all, letting it dry, polishing it out and then counting on a six year old to not destroy it seems like far more hassle than it could be worth.
I would love to hang with the nephew, and you, and Lilya; but I'm not doing that lake trip again. Not unless I can get a hotel room - I'm simply too creaky nowadays to sleep on a couch or an inflatable mattress.
The contrast between our two pictures has been providing me quite a bit of merriment for the last few minutes.
So, as they say, get a hotel room. And I think you're right about the bamboo—I've been thinking it was a snap together version, but it was actually tongue in groove.
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