Demolition Time

We knew that this was going to be difficult and decided to start with a relatively easy task of removing the wall paneling as it’s going to be in the way when we want to remove the floor. If you’ve ever done any body work or replaced anything behind the door panel of a car the process for removing the wall panels in a van is exactly like that. You take the pry bar thingy and pry up where the fasteners are and presto you’re good to go. If you’re reading this and are going to be taking on a similar project do yourself a favor and buy the pry tool.. It’s a commonly available tool at most auto parts store. Mine came with a green handle, unsure if it started out that color…

The Floor

Sure, in many cases this floor could have just been left here and the rest of the project built on top of it, but we wanted insulation and putting insulation on top of the floor would mean that we’d be giving up 1/2″ of height, which in a many projects wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but we’re dealing with a very small space and every fraction of an inch matters… hehe. (If you didn’t find that funny congratulations your mind is pure 🙂 )

For the floor we started out just trying to just pry it up. As you can see in the following pictures.. Things escalated….

Attempt 1 – The flatbar

The flatbar really is an amazing implement of destruction. A truly wonderful tool to have in your belt. I’ve used it many times for baseboards, drywall removal, wall demolition, ect. In the realm of prying apparatuses this one is definitely my favorite because of it’s versatility to both apply a large amount of force and easily apply it to a very specific location. Unfortunately, it just didn’t have quite enough power so I had to try something else.

Attempt 2 – Add a board

This actually worked so well I decided that if one was good……

We continued to drive this under the floor to defeat Glue Guy!!! We met glue guy in an earlier project where we decided that the vinyl floor in our kitchen needed to go away along with the carpet. Prior to the vinyl flooring being laid down it was visited by “glue guy” who made sure that floor was not to separate from the subfloor to which it was attached. And it didn’t…. This marks yet another floor project that we’ve had to defeat “Glue Guy” and what a nemesis he is.

Once we made it to where the floor was free all the way up to the side door we noticed that we were unable to drive the baseboard shims in any further and a new battle strategy had to be formed.

However we were approaching the final battle with Glue Guy who was not going to give up easily….

Attempt 3 – Heat Gun

No shop is complete with out one of these. If you don’t have one go to your nearest hardware store right now and purchase.. They are soo handy to have. You’ll just invent things to heat up. (I’ve actually cooked with it before mostly so I could say that I’ve cooked with it before) May not have been very sanitary though

While there may have been better ways to figure out when an appropriate time to stop applying heat was, I waited until I could smell the glue/plastic melting and that’s when I would strike with the flatbar. (I’m telling ya, that tool is amazing).

While the heat gun/flatbar/baseboard wedge of doom combo was effective it was far from trivial and there were many frustrating words uttered, but after several hours, probably about half a day of work I honestly lost track of time and I’m very sure the smell of glue had nothing to do with that, victory was achieved.

Next up, prepping the floor for insulation and more floor.