Kitchen appliances are modern wonders. In American culture today, nobody lives without a refrigerator, stove, or microwave. If any of the fundamentals fail, action must be taken immediately. Even more so when it happens on vacation.
When I came home from a trip to Texas to attend a friend’s wedding, I found that my trusty 20 year old refrigerator had been down for a few years and a mess had leaked. Apparently it had been leaking for years and I just didn’t know.
As you can see, things have been going on under the refrigerator for quite some time. I would say the fridge hasn’t been out of the storage room for at least 17 years. Maybe it should come out a little more often. A simple change of the refrigerator is now a problem for the floor. So the bottom comes out.
Ok, hmmmm, now what? Spending hours scraping and removing the old floor? There’s no way to match the old floor, and besides, who would want to match a 1965 floor? I mean, I like retro, but even that is a little too much for me. How do I put in a new floor without tearing out the old one? The first step is to smooth out the area where I removed the old nasty floor.
Ok better. This is just the flooring that replaced the old flooring to equate the point with the rest of the flooring in the kitchen. You can see that there must have been a self-leveling stain on the edge of the new floor. Ok, go to the next step.
A 1/4 inch sheath was screwed over the old floor and will serve as the base for the new floor title. Now each screw needs to be leveled with a swab of self-leveling plaster before the actual flooring can be applied. If this is not done, a small divot will appear through the vinyl track. The extra time and effort will pay off in the end. I’ve learned from experience over the years that rushing really does lead to a sad looking completed project. The sheathing is 1/4 inch and the vinyl track is approximately 1/8 inch. If you are raising the height of a 3/8-inch floor, a small portion of the trim will need to be cut from the bottom of the vertical door opening trim.
In the old days, cutting off the underside of a vertical portion of the door panel would have involved removing and cutting off a portion of the panel and then attaching the panel to the door frame. With the invention of the blade cutter, it’s child’s play today. All it takes is to turn on the trimmer and whiz down a little bit without ever removing the trim piece. I firmly believe that projects are such that I can justify buying tools.
So on and on. Kitchen floor part 2 will be published shortly. May all of your projects be completed easily, safely, and on time.
Originally published: 3/19/2008 9:33:00 AM
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