Man, in about 5% of the area, the vinyl tiles were incredibly stuck down. The long handled scraper didn’t work, the power scraper didn’t work, even a sharp hand scraper and a hammer didn’t work. In one place, that 5hit cutback pulled big chunks out of the wood floor when it came free.
So I have a little patching to do, I’ll use a router, cut the damaged area to a uniform depth, then glue in old growth wood that I’ll rip from one of the original studs. It’ll be a visible patch, but an interesting one, the floor will tell its story. I will have to patch the places where the mudroom wall used to be, anyway.
Near the end, I finally found what does work on the incredibly stuck down tiles and cutback. A multitool. It slices the stuff right off.
Tomorrow I’m going to try to get the rest of the cutback off. I rented a floor buffer with a coating removal tool, we’ll see if that works. Oh, and finally remove the sink, its been so useful but its time.
It took me ten hours with an hour of breaks to get the kitchen from all covered with old vinyl tile to this.
Oh, no problematic plywood patches (unless one is hiding under the sink I guess). The refrigerator alcove is plywood, I don’t know if there ever was wood floor there, but I don’t care - no-one sees it.
