This story is long, but doing this all on my own got me excited to try some things I had always wanted to do, but I was scared I couldn’t do it. This is probably the longest post I will have, but it was extensive and taught me a lot.
Long ago (2005) I had just bought my second house. An actual stand alone house and not a condo like my first house. I was 27 years old single woman living alone. I got moved in and had bought a new refrigerator. I loved everything about my new house. People warned me that houses can be a lot more work than a condo, but little did I know how true that was.
It started one day about 2 months after I moved in. I went to grab a soda from the fridge and I looked down and thought my floor looked a little funny. A little bumpy you could say. I had a really bad feeling and pulled the fridge out from its nook. My heart sank into my stomach when I saw the floor under my new fridge looked like a wet book all warped and wrinkled. I looked at the hose from the fridge down into the floor and saw the telltale drip, drip, drip signaling the end of my good day.
I found my neighbor who showed me how to shut off the water at the street level since I couldn’t find the shut off just for the fridge. (We think it was actually under the house and I wasn’t ready to go under there) I pulled up on the hose and cut it off. Since I didn’t know the name of the metal things (coupling) I wanted to bring the piece with me to get a replacement. The guy at George Morland was awesome and for $1.80 he got me the new pieces I needed and he walked me though a step by step on how to fix the leak. It turned out the previous owners (in their moment of brilliance) had simply bent the hose in half and rubber banded it instead of finding the water shut-off. Because they kinked a rubber hose, it split a little like a straw can do and the fridge installers hadn’t noticed it when they installed my fridge. For the record I wasn't there for the installation. My best friend's husband had come over and let the installers in. He said that at the time neither of them saw any leaking. While it didn't leak then, it must have started fairly soon after that given the amount of damage I had. So for close to 2 months that little hose had dripped and dripped.
I also learned that when your fridge goes into a nook under some cabinets and you move it to find wet laminate flooring, the flooring WILL expand and you will NOT be able to move the fridge back into place as it will no longer fit under the cupboard. I HAD to address the floor because I didn't want my fridge to take up permanant residence in the middle of the room. My homeowner’s policy agents came out and took a look. Apparently if there is not a broken pipe gushing water against a wall, they will NOT cover it. They gave me some estimates for the repairs and it was a couple thousands of dollars! (Not counting what would happen if they found issues under the laminate) Needless to say after just purchasing this wonderful house, I had very little extra cash for these repairs.
So I did what all well adjusted person would do….I had a good cry. Then I decided I had no choice but to deal with it. I made some calls and my brothers convinced me that I could do the work myself. I went to Lowe’s and talked to the flooring guy about taking a class to learn how to replace laminate. They guy wasn’t busy and gave me a mini-class right there in the isle. How showed me how to measure and cut and how to put down the water barrier etc. I wrote up a budget for materials and some tools since I didn’t have any yet. I only had to get a group of friends together to get it done.
Well, turned out my ex-boyfriend disappeared when manual labor was involved and my best friend had plans so it was all me. Here is what I was up against.
Long ago (2005) I had just bought my second house. An actual stand alone house and not a condo like my first house. I was 27 years old single woman living alone. I got moved in and had bought a new refrigerator. I loved everything about my new house. People warned me that houses can be a lot more work than a condo, but little did I know how true that was.
It started one day about 2 months after I moved in. I went to grab a soda from the fridge and I looked down and thought my floor looked a little funny. A little bumpy you could say. I had a really bad feeling and pulled the fridge out from its nook. My heart sank into my stomach when I saw the floor under my new fridge looked like a wet book all warped and wrinkled. I looked at the hose from the fridge down into the floor and saw the telltale drip, drip, drip signaling the end of my good day.
I found my neighbor who showed me how to shut off the water at the street level since I couldn’t find the shut off just for the fridge. (We think it was actually under the house and I wasn’t ready to go under there) I pulled up on the hose and cut it off. Since I didn’t know the name of the metal things (coupling) I wanted to bring the piece with me to get a replacement. The guy at George Morland was awesome and for $1.80 he got me the new pieces I needed and he walked me though a step by step on how to fix the leak. It turned out the previous owners (in their moment of brilliance) had simply bent the hose in half and rubber banded it instead of finding the water shut-off. Because they kinked a rubber hose, it split a little like a straw can do and the fridge installers hadn’t noticed it when they installed my fridge. For the record I wasn't there for the installation. My best friend's husband had come over and let the installers in. He said that at the time neither of them saw any leaking. While it didn't leak then, it must have started fairly soon after that given the amount of damage I had. So for close to 2 months that little hose had dripped and dripped.
I also learned that when your fridge goes into a nook under some cabinets and you move it to find wet laminate flooring, the flooring WILL expand and you will NOT be able to move the fridge back into place as it will no longer fit under the cupboard. I HAD to address the floor because I didn't want my fridge to take up permanant residence in the middle of the room. My homeowner’s policy agents came out and took a look. Apparently if there is not a broken pipe gushing water against a wall, they will NOT cover it. They gave me some estimates for the repairs and it was a couple thousands of dollars! (Not counting what would happen if they found issues under the laminate) Needless to say after just purchasing this wonderful house, I had very little extra cash for these repairs.
So I did what all well adjusted person would do….I had a good cry. Then I decided I had no choice but to deal with it. I made some calls and my brothers convinced me that I could do the work myself. I went to Lowe’s and talked to the flooring guy about taking a class to learn how to replace laminate. They guy wasn’t busy and gave me a mini-class right there in the isle. How showed me how to measure and cut and how to put down the water barrier etc. I wrote up a budget for materials and some tools since I didn’t have any yet. I only had to get a group of friends together to get it done.
Well, turned out my ex-boyfriend disappeared when manual labor was involved and my best friend had plans so it was all me. Here is what I was up against.
I planned it for the 4th of July weekend since I had 3 day weekend. Lucky for me I had Jury duty the day before that so I had an extra day since we were dismissed early. I tore out all the old laminate and found 3 layers of linoleum below that. I now hate linoleum with good reason. I looked at the edge of the linoleum and I could see the MDF below that was wet. Called Lowe’s and asked if this was an issue I should address. Yes, I had to...insert more fear and trepidation here. Biting the bullet I then set about removing the 3 layers of linoleum and revealing the extent of the water damage. Once MDF gets wet, it may dry but will never have the structural stability of the original. Since this was my subfloor, I knew what I had to do.
(I will post the pictures into a seperate blog because I am getting irritated trying to add them into this one.)
I went BACK to the store yet again, I bought a circular saw and a miter saw (I realized I needed the miter saw for the new laminate so I broke down and bought it too.) My best friend had shown up once the project got this big and had helped me remove some of the laminate. She and I figured out how to set the circular saw and we cut out a small square in the middle to see what was below. I was sooo glad she found some time to help. I know she was busy, but it made all the difference with her help. My first use of the circular saw. It was AWESOME! Hahaha. We found the large beams with no water issues. So it looked as if it was only a subfloor level issue.
I used the circular saw to cut a perimeter around the wet area. This is where I have to admit I didn’t do everything I should have. I was going above and beyond myself here and I knew the water had gotten under the cabinets, but I just couldn’t find the courage to tear out cabinets to replace the subfloor below them. My only hope is the new owners of that house didn’t find extensive mold and forgive me for chickening out. Not to mention I just didn’t have the money to go that far. As it was I was blowing through my savings really fast. The materials for the floor were $450 I think and then I bought the miter saw and circular saw and a few small hand tools I would need for the flooring job. All in all I think this whole experience cost me about $700. I would have been more upset, but I knew a lot of that was the power tools and hand tools I could use again later.
So where was I…Yes, I cut the perimeter and given this was wet MDF it was NOT nice enough to come up in large pieces. I had to blow through hours of work breaking that out of there. Hammer and crowbar in hand, I worked my way through that mess. Yet ANOTEHR trip to Lowe’s and I got a sheet of MDF and cut it to size. I learned that you should use decking nails to nail in the floor. This will keep the nails from working their way out under the vibration of all that walking on it.
And finally, I could lay down the new laminate. I put the water barrier plastic down and got to work on the laminate. Once you learn the trick to ending one row and using that piece to begin the next, its not that hard. My only problem was my miter saw. It was awesome, but it couldn’t cut through the full depth of the piece of laminate. I have to flip it around and cut it again to make it all the way through. I was learning my circular saw hated me (I didn’t learn to use it properly until recently this year) so I wasn’t about to use it to cut through each board.
It was a battle, but I won. I blew through the floor in no time once I got in the groove. Miraculously I was able to get the whole thing done with the last piece going in Sunday night. I HURT something terrible. My hands had blisters, my knees didn’t forgive me for weeks, but I had done it. I had put in a whole new floor and part of the subfloor. I trimmed it out and I was sooo proud of myself. I had done it. I had actually done it.
True I did make mistakes. I should have torn out the cabinets to replace the subfloor under there. I should have thought about the dishwasher. I didn’t pull it out and I doubt it can ever be again without fixing the floor. I forgot you can pull those out and installed the floor right up against the base of it. Sorry new owners!!
While I was embarrassed for the mistakes, it still meant the world to me that I had done it myself with just a little help from my best friend. It looked WAY better than I expected it to. I was proud to show it off to people and show them what I had done for myself. It also gave me a world of courage to come up against any project and feel I can do it. I loved my new power tools and I was excited to learn how to use more. Growing up with my dad being a carpenter had made me always want to use tools. I just hadn’t bought any. Now I did and I wanted to build more and fix more. For 2 years I got to live there and look down and know that I had installed that floor! And best of all, my fridge wasn’t leaking anymore and still fit into the nook under the upper cabinet.
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