Kitchen appliances are modern day marvels. No one lives without a refrigerator, stove, or microwave in today’s American culture. So when one of the basics fail, it requires immediate action. Even more so when it happens while on vacation.
Upon returning home from a trip to Texas to attend a friend’s wedding, I found that my faithful fridge of 20 some years had failed and leaked out a mess. Apparently it was leaking for years and I just didn’t know it.
As you can see things have been happening under the fridge for quite some time. I would say that the fridge hasn’t been out of it’s cubby for at least 17 years. Maybe it should come out a little more often. So now a simple refrigerator replacement becomes a floor issue as well. So out comes the floor.
Ok, hmmmm, now what? Spend hours scraping and removing the old flooring? 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’s a bit much for me. So how do I put a new floor in without tearing out the old? The first step is to level up the area that I removed the old nasty flooring.
Ok, better. This is just the flooring that replaced the old flooring to make the spot level with the rest of the floor in the kitchen. You can see that there had to be some self leveling patch around the fringe of the new flooring. Ok, on to the next step.
A 1/4 inch sheathing was screwed over the old floor and will serve as the base for the new flooring title. Now each screw has to be leveled up with a dab of self leveling patch before the actual flooring can be applied. If that’s not done a little divot will appear through the vinyl title. So the extra time and effort will pay off in the end. I’ve learned from experience over the years that haste really does make for a sad looking finished project. The sheathing is 1/4 inch and the vinyl title is about 1/8 inch. When raising up the level of a floor 3/8 inch, a small amount of trim must be trimmed off the bottom of the vertical door opening trim.
In days of old trimming off the bottom of a vertical piece of door trim would have involved taking the trim off and cutting off a bit of the trim and then installing the trim back on the door frame. Today, with the invention of the blade trimmer, it’s a snap. All that’s involved is turn on the trimmer and buzz off a small chunk from the bottom without ever removing the trim piece. I’m a firm believer that projects are so I can justify buying tools.
So onward and upward. Kitchen Floor Part 2 will be posted soon. May all your projects be simple, safe, and completed in a timely manner.
