Ripping up the Kitchen Floors | #PBJreno

There's just no way around it... doing ANYTHING related to flooring - your back WILL be sore. Luckily this stuff was SO hard to get up the boys did most of this part of it.
So a few days ago we ripped up the flooring. And to do so we had about 4 layers of materials to get through: Vinyl covering, plywood/underlayment, plastic sheet, and sub-floor boards..and then joists. We took everything up and out to the joists and the biggest reason why was the floors had become squeaky when walking across. That happens when your sub-floors and joist nails have become loose/rusty and they're sliding in/out of the sub-floor.

Getting the plywood up was serious hard work...there was honestly HUGE nails every few inches. We started in the upper level in the kitchen and once we finally got that up we tried a different tactic for the lower level.
Using a circular saw we set the depth to be cut just deep enough it cuts through the plywood layer but not into the sub-floor. We My Father in Law cut big 2x3 squares out in the floor and we're were just able to pry underneath them and pop them up. A LOT easier than our initial method.

All said and done we had the flooring up until the sub-floor level in a few hours on a Saturday.
So the original part of the home is the upper level in the kitchen. Those sub-floors/joist are above the laundry room in the basement. The lower level area was an addition so those are sitting above just a slab foundation poured for the addition.

The day after we were able to pull up all the subfloor from the upper level (we'll be leaving the subfloor from the lower level, and we just screwed in screws 1 per every 2 nails to make them sturdier). I kept getting SO dizzy during this part.... directly below, as I mentioned, is the laundry room so moving across these boards and being able to see through to the basement kept throwing me for a loop.
We removed all the boards though (saving them for a little DIY project later) and did a good cleaning underneath them. Not sure if you know this but unfinished basement ceilings are typically COVERED in spider webs and dust..and ickiness. So I did a full thorough cleaning as much as I could from up-top.

Next up is laying the NEW sub-floor!!!

This renovation has been long only because we're working on it every night after a full day's of work and all day every day on the weekends. We're SO lucky with all the help we've received from family and friends, ESPECIALLY my Father in Law - AKA our carpenter, electrician, plumber, handyman, contractor....etc.etc.etc.