Getting down to the wood

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8 am biked to Home Depot with Art for new scraper blades, but they don't have any, so I bought a new scraper. And knee pads. Now I've joined the big boys!

9:30 The new scraper works pretty well, but the knee pads hurt on bare skin. No more shorts. Sadly, my painting pants are all ripped at the knees

10:45 So, for those keeping score at home ... so far we tore up the self-stick linoleum in the kitchen, removed a thousand screws, then the quarter inch plywood under that, then a layer of Pennsylvania Dutch linoleum, then a layer of green linoleum, and now we're down to the black paper and adhesive. We can see the hardwood underneath!

11:15 am New plan-- spray, wait 10 minutes, scrape the upper layer off, repeat twice. I calculate this will take about 3 hours for the kitchen and another 2 for the hall, but at least there are lots of breaks, and its feels less like I might collapse from exhaustion.

12:15pm new spraying method is working beautifully.

1:08 pm done with the kitchen. Now it looks like wood with black and gray blotches! Erin has got the first grit done in Rhea's room, which looks better than the kitchen!

5:30 pm Hah! Using a belt sander is positively zen after all that scraping and edging!

8:30 Did 2 passes with 24 grit in the kitchen, then 3 passes with 16 grit. I know that's going the wrong direction, but we didn't want to gum up the 16-grit. It looks pretty good except for a big water stain where the fridge was 10 years ago. Jershon scraped the hallways.

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Photos

Spiffy new kneepads
Yup, its a posed shot.