Kitchen Floor

A couple weeks ago Brandon and I got real ambitious and cleaned out our garage. We threw out a ton of stuff that did not need to be there. Among some of our "treasures" we found were all the flooring remnants the previous owners had left for us. We had no use for them (because we're hoping to replace our floors one of these days, ok years), so I listed them on Freecycle. Someone came and took all my tile, but the vinyl used in my kitchen is still available. I had taken this picture to send to someone who requested it, wanting to see if it would match her stuff -- see my pretty kitchen floor?

Yeah, and then Friday morning I woke up to Brandon screaming. I finally found out it was because our kitchen floor no longer looked like the picture above. It had exploded (as one of our neighbors put it, it looked like a volcano). After some investigating we found a leak in the hose that runs to the ice maker in the fridge. We got it turned off and cleaned up, then Brandon drilled some holes in the floor to try to let the water from underneath dry up. It didn't help; it only got worse. I had a friend in town for the weekend, so she had her handy husband stop by and he explained why this type of subfloor wouldn't dry up. He also pointed out how the previous (idiot) owner had just put the subfloor on top of their existing linoleum. I suppose that might have helped the water not leak into the basement ceiling, but I still don't understand people that can't just do a job right. So, we got to spend our Memorial Day pulling up the kitchen floor.

Chloe was a super helper. I think she would have done the whole thing, if we'd let her. We had several neighbors stop by to offer help and suggestions. My visiting teacher brought over cupcakes. Now doesn't that make the whole ordeal bearable? I think so (but only because they were chocolate!)

Here you can see a little bit of the old linoleum sticking out. We're just going to leave it until we decide exactly what we want to do with it. Yes, it's ugly, but it's not THAT bad. However, Chloe is so funny with it. She won't step on it. She tried to just walk around on the counters to get to the fridge, but since I don't allow walking on the counters it's done well to keep her out of the kitchen. We're going to survive, but I still hope we find a good replacement sometime in the near future. Anyone want to trade me homes? Lately, renting sounds pretty good to me.