A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Banter Hall So that is what 100 year old wood looks like!

We couldn't do much work on our fence yesterday, so we decided to see what was under the linoleum in the kitchens. Up came the linoleum.........gee, another layer of linoleum!! Big surprise there. Not only was it linoleum, but linoleum TILES.....with GLITTER!!!!! Ohhhh.....aahhhhhhh! So then we took that off only to find some weird kind of fiberboard layer. They must have really wanted to make sure that sucker wasn't going anywhere because they nailed it down something fierce!!!! As if the nails don't make the board hard enough to get up, it is scored every 2-3" on the underside and breaks there no matter what you use to pry it up! Under the fiberboard is a 7" plank floor. ....and all of this excitement was in the small kitchen!

Top layer of linoleum (hideous)


2nd layer of linoleum (tiles) complete with glitter!! ...wonder if you had to pay extra for that feature??


Fiberboard


The 100 year old plank!!!


better picture of old plank with more of the flooring removed




And here was something we found a few weeks ago...it is a newspaper that was attached to a wall going down to the basement. It is ultra fragile and we don't know how old it is. ...any ideas as to how to get it down without destroying it??

Ugh, those linoleum tiles are killer to remove. Hopefully you can just pull up the fibreboard with them still attached. Are you going to re-do the plank flooring?

Not sure on how to remove the newspaper, we've tried many times...it just crumbles. We've found sheets of it everywhere in our barn and the old hen house.

yes isn't it fun working on older homes--yo never know what you might find.

I agree with tamara in asking if yo are going to refinish the wood planks---I bet weith a good sanding and a nice varnish or poyurathane finish it would be beautiful.

We need to pull everything off of the floor to make sure it is all in good condition. If it is, we are going to sand them down and then either just seal it with a poly or paint them and then poly over that a few times. I've been doing alot of reading on painted floors and it looks like they will hold up well in a high traffic area if given a few coats of a water based poly (so it doesn't get an amber color over the paint).

To be honest, if the floor isn't in good enough condition to paint and seal, I wouldn't be opposed to putting plywood over it and then priming and painting that!! I've seen some pictures of that and it doesn't look bad at all!! I think the paint colors the fact that it is plywood.

I'm thinking about trying to cover the newspaper with clear contact paper and then pulling on the contact paper to try to get the paper off of the walls. I'd really like to be able to keep the newspaper as something cool to look at after our remodeling is finished.

might try buying clear contact paper and try lifting it like that

yup....I think I am going to try that. I hope it works!