Under 5 layers of flooring

Friday was wall demolition.  Saturday was time to rip up the flooring—the many, many layers of flooring.

We knew this would be quite a task because we could tell that the kitchen floor was significantly higher than the rest of the floors in the house.  We were pretty certain we would find a few layers.

Thankfully (I guess), Previous Owner pretty much stinks at tile installation and most of it came up relatively easily.  The problem was that Previous Owner, in all his home renovation wisdom and know-how, laid said tile on top of cement board that he screwed down to old flooring that he must not have felt like removing.  But wait!  This wasn’t cement board intended for underlay for tile.  Previous Owner used a Hardie board-like product that is, in fact, intended to be siding, not flooring.  Given the other genius choices he had made, we really weren’t surprised, and were, in fact, ready for any crazy decisions he may have made.

The “cement board”  was screwed down on top of a layer of vinyl flooring circa 1970-something.  The vinyl flooring was on top of a layer of linoleum circa 1960.  The linoleum was on top of another layer of linoleum from 1947, which sat on top of a layer of newspaper—including The Houston Post—from February 1947.  I’m guessing this newspaper served the same purpose for the floors as the feed sack did for the walls.  I must admit, this was a pretty cool discovery—dusty, like everything else right now, but really, really cool!

Lots of layers!

We found old ads for everything from Folgers Coffee to Red Brand Fence products to Lane Bryant (for “stout” women) to Little Orphan Annie and Dick Tracy comics to the first aerial shot of the Texas Medical Center (which, at that time, was home to all of three buildings and surrounded by grass and trees).  We pulled up as many intact papers as we could.  We will save and frame several.  My favorite find, however, we were not able to save as it had become one with the subfloor in front of the sink.  This was an ad for Walt Disney’s Song of the South that was playing at The Majestic Theatre in Downtown Houston.  Song of the South is difficult, if not impossible, to find in the U.S. these days (it’s not considered politically correct enough to sell).  I find Uncle Remus completely charming, however, and love his stories—the ones about Brer Fox and Brer Bear and Brer Rabbit my dad used to tell me at bedtime.  And who doesn’t love singing Zipadee Do Dah!?  Nevertheless, P.C. or not, it’s such a piece of history and it’s right there under my floor.  (I at least got a good picture that I might print up and frame.)

Newspaper laid on top of tongue-n-groove subfloor

Walt Disney's Song of the South playing at The Majestic