My New Dining Room Floor

So I have been in my house a year now. I have 3 cats I have "inherited" from my sister (she is alive and well, her husband became allergic and they needed a home). As any cat owner knows, cats can be a bit destructive towards certain home furnishings; carpets, furniture, etc. One thing that has suffered quite a lot was the old carpet in my dining room.

It has to be decades old, and was never anything to write home about, but the cats made it look a lot worse. One liked to use it for her scratching post. The one that has hairballs preferred to throw up on this low ply carpet, which is very difficult to clean.

What you are seeing is the remains of several hairball stains. Obviously this carpet had to go.

I had decided to put in a wood looking laminate floor, something that would look nice, be easy to install, and not cost too much (it is a rental house). I found some laminate self adhesive planks on sale at my local ACO Hardware that fit the bill. My Mom offered to help me tear the old carpet up and lay the new floor down. She prepared by watching some DIY youtube videos, noting that we should have some paper masks for the demolition.

Here we are in our fancy masks.

First step was getting up the old carpet, made all the easier by my new raptor tool (it is really a tile cutter, but it works great on tearing carpet, much better than a box cutter. Best $5 I have ever spent).

We were working under the belief that under the carpet was plywood. The rest of the house is hard wood, but some of the carpet came up and it appeared like it was a plywood flooring. However, we soon discovered it was some sort of cardboard wall cover over top of, surprise surprise, hard wood floor.

We don't know exactly what the black stuff is, aside from it being some sort of adhesive. Luckily the carpet came up much easier than we thought, because it wasn't glued down too much. Same with the cardboard, probably due to the age of the glue.

I can't figure out why someone would have done this to a nice hard wood floor. Once we got all that stuff up, I scraped of as much of the black glue off the floor, and removed all the various staples & nails that were also holding down the cardboard. Seriously, glue, nails and staples. I had to use pliers to get most of them out, as I cannot figure out how they were able to nail some of them down nearly under the trim.

Next came the fun transformation part. Using a fancy double laser level to assure straight lines, I began to lay the laminate planks. Since they were self adhesive, this went by much faster than I thought it would.

I staggered them, first laying down the whole planks. Next came measuring and cutting the partial planks. I used the level to mark the backside of the planks, then with Mom helping to hold them down, cut them on a cutting board.

I had a couple odd shaped pieces that we saved till the end. 8 hours after beginning this project I now have a brand new, beautiful dining room floor. Thanks for your help Mom!

That is Morley slinking by, probably lamenting the loss of her scratching post carpet. I also bought the same flooring for the enclosed porch, which will be completed at a later date, since all my muscles ache. It is worth it though because everytime I glance in the general direction of my dining room I smile.