Our Winter Storm Disaster—Hardwood Flooring Removal

Well, peeps.

After a brief reprieve from the demolition posts to bring you some of our fun sanity-savers, I’m back at it again with more nitty gritty.

This time, to share the intense process that’s been underway for the past three days to remove our hardwood flooring.

If you’ll recall, when I last posted, the kitchen ceiling had been removed, tons o’ sections of drywall throughout the house had been removed, and a section of kitchen cabinets had been removed.

As I mentioned before, there will be lots more kitchen demolition to happen at a later date (the island, and all the cabinets have to go), but that won’t happen for quite some time, as we’re trying (trying, trying) to retain as much functionality in the kitchen as humanly possible.

Anywho.

With all of the above already out of the way, and our downstairs furniture moved into the storage pod, it was time for the flooring demo to begin.

We’ve been through a few flooring removal events in our time, and each one is pretty unpleasant and grueling and loud, but this one definitely ranks high up there.

Since our hardwood floors were glued down (other options are nailed down or “floated”) we were told early on by our water mitigation team that it would be a PROCESS to rip them up.

Such a process, in fact, that the water mitigation team didn’t even have the equipment and capacity to handle it themselves. 

So we had to secure another crew to tackle this major task. 

And, thankfully, the water mitigation team got us in touch with a reputable group (that actually removed flooring in our next door neighbor’s house a few months ago), and, yet again, we were blessed, blessed, blessed to have this crew hop on it so quickly. 

Now. The first step to this yucky process is just a heartbreaking one, mentally. 

Because this glued down flooring is impossible to remove in large sections, deep grooves have to be made in a checkerboard pattern throughout the entire surface. :(



It is an insanely tough process that involves a crew member on their hands and knees with this saw (no clue of the technical term) that they have to push along the floor whilst practically in a yoga plank position. It’s nuts.



And it’s just so, so sad to see the (purposeful) grid-mark destruction that’s caused by this process.

Then once the grid marks for a given area are complete, the crew busts out this wicked looking machine:

It has this flat shovel-like blade (super technical term, ha) at the end, and the crew basically has to work to remove each ever-loving square of flooring. Individually.



Until there are bucketfuls of these hardwood flooring squares. :(

Ugh. It just hurts.

And it’s such grueling labor for these crews.

It took an entire day to put the checkerboard grooves in a decent portion of the downstairs, and to get just the living room flooring removed. Apparently, that area of the house was liberally glued down and did not want to come up.

So this is where they ended up on Day 1.



And because it was just so depressing to see our beloved floors in shambles, I decided to steal back some joy from the situation.

And let the kiddos use the floor as their very own grid paper for fun at dinner time. 

Because when in the world will they ever have a chance like this again???

(Dear God, please don’t give us a water disaster process to navigate again in the foreseeable future. Or ever. Amen.)











It was a lovely mental break to allow the crazies to just draw to their heart’s content while I cooked dinner in our torn apart kitchen.

Some surprise creativity amidst our torn-up environment.

And the next day, after the flooring crew was done for the evening, I found a single square they left for me on the counter as a memento. :)



Day 2 was spent removed the flooring from the entry, dining room, kitchen and some hallways. Lots o’ progress that day.







Oh, and please note the semi-destroyed fireplace. More on that later. :(








So...yeah. Lots of progress and lots of sad, cement and barren wasteland, now.







Day 3 was spent removing the flooring from the master bedroom, additional hallway areas, and the powder bath. And, boooooo to the commode removal.



Nothing like having a pretty sh*** week and pulling into the driveway to find a sh**er in the garage. Some MAJOR symbolism there, ha. 





So...there you have it.

One of the most invasive and loud and laborious portions of this water disaster demolition is complete.

Though I’m definitely experiencing my moments of mourning throughout this, I continually recognize the incredible gift of having this process move forward at warp speed.

Honestly, we couldn’t have asked for this to happen any faster than it did.

We are now 10 days out from the disaster, and nearly all of the demo that’s going to happen for the time being (as the rest of the kitchen demo won’t happen until we’re closer to an end goal of having new cabinets built to replace the old ones—and that will take weeks and weeks) has happened. 

I’ll post some final pics this weekend of other odds and ends—including the sad fireplace news.

But in the meantime, after the mitigation team returns tomorrow for their final (hopefully) day, we’ll be entering a slight lull in the process.

Basically, our renovation company that will be handling the whole shebang of putting this all back together will be submitting their bid to us and to our insurance agent next week for review and approval. And that hoopla and paperwork and funds procurement process will likely take all of next week and maybe a bit beyond.

So, I suppose on the upside, we might get a slight noise reprieve for a few days or possibly a week. And we’ll hope that things pick back up as soon as possible so we can shift into the next phase: restoration. 

SO grateful it’s the weekend.

I need some rest and organization time, and snuggles with my babies—big time.

Stay healthy, stay sane.

Over and out.