Posted on November 24, 2009 - by Cate

First Reno Project: First Floor Floors

This weekend we ripped up old, crumbling parquet floors in the dining room and front foyer. We got great advice from a hardwood floor installer regarding removal. Why is that destroying things always seems much easier than building new? It worked like a charm!

After removing the quarter round (shoe molding), we took a circular saw and cut a grid into the floor following the parquet in both directions. Why? The parquet was glued to a masonite subfloor. That subfloor was subsequently stapled to the plywood flooring in both rooms.

By setting the depth of the circular saw to the first two layers, we were able to take a crowbar to each quadrant and rip them up with relative ease. Then we tackled the parquet around the perimeter.

Here we took a different approach. We pried off only the parquet layer from the subfloor (which butt fit up to the baseboard). Then we removed the baseboard and then the subsequent masonite, tucked underneath the drywall.

The final step, removing or pounding down the remaining staples/nails left behind that didn’t come up with the masonite! Heck, our trash removal service took it all away the very next day! Which is a very good thing, because I could barely move and no amount of Aleve made a difference. Why oh why did I give up my yoga classes…

postscript: both the sump pump and the water heater gave way this week — plumbing scares me — and everything comes in three’s…turns out it’s cheaper to rebuild an electric water heater than a gas one (silver lining?) U6DHEZJDB3AW