Whew. Tonight’s project took me close to an hour and you’d never know it.

Before going at the floor with a pry bar, I wanted to know what I was dealing with. Was it a floating floor? Was it lying on the same level subfloor as the previously-carpeted rooms? Did it have some sort of underlay?

What I did was use a chisel to carefully remove a top layer of floor, roughly 2″ by 4″ in a discreet corner. I made this piece as neat as possible so that it could be replaced if I got to the subfloor and decided that the hardwood was staying. I then chiseled one thin layer of wood after another until I got to a stiff plastic opaque vapour barrier. Under that, I found the same subfloor as in the study.

I’m therefore good to go for the removal of the hardwood. It still feels SO wrong, but it really is the right decision in the long run.

The biggest difficulty is that motorhome walls are the last thing to be installed, so the hardwood runs under the walls. I will have to use a combination of chisel and pry bar to remove those boards, but the boards in the middle of the room will come apart with a minimum of fuss.

The forecast is for sun all of my weekend (Tuesday through Thursday) and if this holds I will be SO happy!!! I’m going to do like last week and push up my bedtime to get up early enough to add several hours of sunlight to my day. I’d like to have all three boxes of flooring installed by Wednesday night, which should take me to the kitchen. I’ve decided to not go with my usual habit of doing trim last and instead doing the trim as I go along. There’s no point reusing any existing trim as it is all a weird hodgepodge of materials and sizes. I plan to go with a uniform style in wood. Most of the trim now is cardboard, which makes no sense in wet rooms!

There’s no time to waste. I am expected in Dawson three months from today!