Kitchen floor woes

[SarahFair]

My kitchen..

Sigh...

We are about to undergo renovations on my kitchen. Its an exciting time! Dont get me wrong, but its not cheap and now the floors.
The floors!

Whats currently down is about a quarter inch thick laminate. Whoever laid it didnt do a good job.
You can see the give when someone walks on it, when the light hits it certain ways you can see odd "ripples" and theres gaps in some seams.

I pulled up the air vent to see whats under there and it looks like theres the laminate, the padding for the laminate, old linoleum floor, hardwood, then the hardwood sub-floor.
Im not sure if it is linoleum that contains asbestos, or if even linoleum at all. Its driving my crazy that I cant find ou, that is, without the SO finding out I cut some of the floor out
But seriously, if anyone has any ideas on how I can sneakily cut that floor out to see..


At some point they closed off part of the back porch and made a laundry room.
They did a pretty alright job, until it came to the floors. Its lower than the kitchen floor and kind of just slopes off; meaning they didnt raise the floor to make it all even.

I also think the kitchen may not be original. If you look at the kitchen window from outside it looks like an old doorway.. (the last window on the right)
What do yall think?

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So my dilemma,
To configure in all the appliances Im having to rearrange everything but the sink and dishwasher. This will consist of tearing out all the current cabinetry and adding an island.
I know, I know, not very historic-esc, but the way the kitchen is laid out there is not many options (trust me, the cabinet guy and I were at it for over 2 hours)

So anyways...

Im guessing if we are doing a tear out and putting and island in we need to do the floors first?
(The SO is very unexcited)
My biggest reserve is the linoleum and asbestos. We have 2 children in the home so its not like I can just tear my kitchen out for a month and have harmful stuff floating all over the house.
My next reserve is matching the flooring. You can see from the living room, through the dining room and into the kitchen, which is why Im hoping the original floor are under there..
but matching the laundry room (the old back porch) is another hang up.


Soooooo any advice?

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[eclecticcottage]

I'll ponder more later but just quickly-I don't think your old window was a doorway, rather, it looks to me like it was a skinnier window the same height as the others on that side. It looks like it would have lined up on the top and bottom with the others, visually.

[SarahFair]

Huh, maybe you're right! Odd how they closed it off.

[SarahFair]

Here's inside the kitchen vent

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[phil]

my take on it is that the kitchen used to be your back porch. the roof tells the story, i think it's a later addition. Your kitchen window was the same as the one to the left of it but they put a smaller window in there because they wanted to put the counter there. it wasn't a door. the porch may have been added later. If that's all true then the kitchen was in the main part of the house. I'd say they likely had a wood stove hooked up to the chimney.
You might see from the basement looking up , if the ceiling isn't closed then maybe you could see holes from plumbing to the old sink, or maybe it never even had water who knows..

the asbestos tile. Its the fibers of asbestos that you are worried about so if you work on it don't' breath the dust you can use a bit of water to dampen things. Also the mastic holding down the tiles might be asbestos. You could take up a corner and have a look, you might have to pull a baseboard or some laminate. get a sample, have it tested. if it is jute backed stuff it might not be asbestos. maybe you are lucky and it isn't glued right down but mine was.
that mastic may be soluble in water or maybe solvent or paint stripper. I'd try to see what will dissolve a sample to know what you are dealing with and make a plan to wash it all off or the sanpaper will gum up. I had to use a clothes iron and a bottle of water that I'd squitrt on the floor to heat up the tar stuff and scrape it off bit by bit. then found lots of rusty nails in the flooring and had to us ewood bleach to get rid of the black stains then to color correct the floor . it was a ton of work.

I had lots of it. some came up ok with just a heat gun and putty knife. It was getting the mastic off the wood floor that was harder. some of the mastic I could dissolve with paint stripper it took 10 gallons of it, You can imagine the fumes. You couldn't do that in winter.

It's a small place and doing what you plan on is a pretty major reno. as it is now it looks clean and nice. Yea we can see the mode like siding etc and laminate floor. If you aren't both in agreement on a major reno be careful it can be a hard situation living with kids and someone not on board with renos and the kitchen torn apart.

as a basic rule I usually try to clean up each room from the top down. ceiling, walls then the floor but yea if you want to finish the floor under the cabinets they could be torn out. Id' step back and see if it's really worth putting yourself in that spot financally and as far as living in the space while you modify.

Another option might be to take up the laminate and lay a new floor with reclaimed old wood from another house.. when I did mine I tore out the cabinets but had to leave the sink and counter in place so I could live , then I finished the floor and installed new cabinets and sink, and then I disconnected the old sink. You can't really live without a sink for long so you need a work around. renovating a kitchen is a lot to live through but especially so if you plan to rip out all the cabinetry and reconfigure and do the floors.

if your kitchen was an outdoor porch that wood could be quite weathered. If you can see up from downstairs you might see if the subfloor is cut or anything. You might get the flor all torn up to find plywood patches and things like that or the wood might be curled up from outside exposure?

how is the wiring? is it insulated? any asbestos insulation in the attic? Seriously before I tore everything apart I'd have a good conversation and think outside the box a bit. can you rent a place while you do the major part of modifications? can you really estimate all the costs of a new kitchen? If you are buying new cabinets, fixing the floor etc etc it can really add up and aside from your love or the house it needs to make financial sense to both of you as you are both invested in it. Maybe Im sensitive because the one I bought was pretty old and worn in and needed basicly everything. I was happy to do the work but she wasn't into it in the same way and eventually we amicably separated and I gave her half of evrythhing and continued on my own. Its ok now but I'd discuss before you start youll need all your energy for the modifications and can't do that if there is a lot of disagreement on the overall scope.

[SarahFair]

I don't think it'll get to a point where we want to separate. He knows it needs to be done, his seventh deadly sin is sloth... lol

We have a reclaimed wood company out here in the city we live in which is an old historic town so I was thinking of what you said and just pulling up the floating laminate floor and laying down reclaimed wood.

Looking over the pictures again it looks as though there's a couple wood floors there.

When you go into the Attic, while I haven't walked over to the area because it's all blown in insulation up there, there's what looks like an old chimney, when you're looking at the trussles of the house it looks original over the kitchen. When you get into the crawl space I can't tell because they built a cellar down there with really thick walls in that area.
But to look at the flooring from above it looks like regular subfloor that's throughout the rest of the house

[eclecticcottage]

FYI, chimneys for cook stoves didn't (apparently) always go to the floor, so you might not be able to see evidence from below even if you could get to that spot. the one in the bungalow project starts about 5-6' above the floor-they blocked off the bottom (don't know how yet) and supported it underneath with 2x4's and built a cupboard in that space. It was a wood cookstove because the remainder of the chimney (it was taken down at roof level prior to me buying the house) is absolutely seeping creosote.

this is the best image I have that shows what I'm talking about, it's in the left corner

[phil]

in the picture of the outside the brick seems to match. I am thinking the portion with the higher roof was the house, but it had a covered porch and so the subfloor and the floring matches when viewed from below because it is original , but then the porch was closed to make your kitchen. Im not nececarily correct it's just my take on what you said. it could have been a mudroom?

when I bought used flooring the pricing wasn't too bad. If you re-lay old flooring you won't have issues with the nails in the way. Youll probably want o still sand the floors. removing the laminate and replacing with 3/4 flooring might raise the floors a little. as an option you might run the flooring the other way from the older floor. If you can get wind of any houses staked for demo you might save by buying the floor and removing it yourself rather than having the old house place make a markup on it. Once you get the first board out the rest will probably come up pretty fast.

see what the others suggest? for the house , the kitchen to me didnt' look that bad and to weigh up the costs of reno maybe making he whole house look "original" might be a tough go. I admire your inspiration. Of course you can make it what you want to.

You could probably lift it and put a full basement too if you wanted. i wonder if you might be in a better position if you did that and then you'd have a place to build a new dream kitchen and have a house twice the size. and all the while use the clean space to live in? You might find you could contract out he structural bits for the price of the kitchen you plan. I see them doing that a lot around me as the land is so pricey, but at least it preserves most of what's there. the lifting happens quickly with the right guys and equipment. most of the cost is the foundation I think , framing goes fast. you could have contractors just do the parts until it's lockable and dry than do the rest yourselves.

There is lots of potential. The cabinets are all probably particleboard ones but the space looks clean and livable. if you plan to rip it apart I'd try to figure out the stages first. Sometimes it's like a chess game with each move made towards your final goal and of course money is always part of the equation.


Phil

[JRC]

I agree with the others about your kitchen window. I think they had to put in a smaller window to make room on the wall for the counter. And, IMO, they finished it that way on the outside to save money. Personally, I think it looks better this way, than if they had fixed the siding, and you only had a little square window in the middle of a blank wall.

As for the kitchen floor, I think that robin's egg blue layer was from the 50s or 60s, and might have asbestos. But, I think that was laid on top of an older layer of flooring, that was laid on the original wood floor. I love that kind of archeology, but I think the only way to know for sure, is to start tearing into it.

[phil]

If you don't' plan to move the counter I'd consider making the window look like the other but with some stained glass in at least the bottom half so no one can see the counter from the outside of the house. then maybe you could make it appear to match the other in dimension? If you stuck a LED light or something behind the stained glass window you'd only see it from outside and it might look OK like that ? call it a "faux window" ? it looks like they just slid it closed a little and then put a block on top and under the window to make it the height they wanted. you could probably just copy the missing one. I think you have the outer sash there they just added a strip to divide it more. at least you have most of the window and they didn't' replace it with vinyl. maybe you'd have to divide the panes or pick a stained glass pattern that had some division where the unseen portion meets the portion you look through. the cabinetry blocked the top of the window.. it's a puzzle how to do it so it doesn't look wrong. It looks like they also blocked the top portion of the lower two windows for some reason. I wonder if you lowered the backsplash and opened the valance thing above then you might get a taller window and more light in the kitchen. and be able to have 2/3 of the original window showing and just the bottom two panes as a Faux window? I kind of like the kitchen If you wanted you could renew the countertop and even maybe spring for some nice wood on the face and add some of your own details. It looks like they didn't do such a bad job with the layout. I'd find it hard to tear that out and if I did anything with the floor, I'd just leave it in place and finish up to it. if you ran the floor parallel to the counter and bought a little extra you can fix the floor there if ever you should want to later. if you raise the floor by 1/2" then you might have trouble pulling the dishwasher, it depends how much vertical clearance you have. you might have to lift the countertop by 1/2" or something but you wouldn't want ot lock it in there.