Previous owners went self stick tile crazy please help.....

Hi my name is Jen and I own a 91 year old house in Massachusetts. I'm in the process of refinishing the hardwood floors (well softwood Douglas Fir) and even though I have no clue what I'm doing I think the one room I sanded came out pretty good. I posted a picture and I appreciate blunt feedback so if it looks like crap please feel free to tell me.....Here's the problem I'm having.....
The living room, spare room, and hallway are all original Douglas Fir floors. The floor in the hallway has a good amount of water damage and I had to tear up a good sized section of it. The tongue & groove fir at Home Depot looks identical, but it's way too light and I tried every shade of stain and nothing will match the original. I can't afford reclaimed flooring, so I figured out a solution, steal it from the kitchen floor. I plan on putting tile in the kitchen so I can use something cheap to take up the 3/4" height. So I start to pull up the floating floor I put in a couple years ago and I find 4 layers of self stick tiles, then a layer of linoleum, then lauan plywood, then the old Douglas Fir. I removed about 1 square foot before I wanted to run head first into a wall. Is there any easy way to remove this stuff? I'm going to be here for the next year doing it with a pry bar and hammer. Thank You in advance for any hints you can give me.

Try using a roofing shovel to get under the plywood and see if that takes it up in bigger sheets than the pry bar. You also can stand up doing it. I may leave the fasteners down and you would have to pull them by hand with pliers, but a lot of them will come up with the ply.
GOOD LUCK!!

Daris

DarisMulkin said:

Try using a roofing shovel to get under the plywood and see if that takes it up in bigger sheets than the pry bar. You also can stand up doing it. I may leave the fasteners down and you would have to pull them by hand with pliers, but a lot of them will come up with the ply.
GOOD LUCK!!

Daris

Click to expand...

That makes sense. I'll try it out later today. Thank you.

When i get floors like that ,I set my rip saw to a 1/8" above the bottom ,and cut it into sections .

I just wanted to thank you guys. Both of your suggestions combined worked well. I used a circular saw and cut it up into chunks about 2'x2' then used the shovel to pry it up. I won't even pretend it was easy, but much easier than anything else I was trying. I was amazed that the chunks I pulled up were so heavy. Fortunately the fir flooring underneath came up fairly easy.

God Bless you guys if you do this professionally. I do most of my work myself, plumbing, electrical, tile, re-sodded my entire yard etc. All of that stuff takes a good amount of work, but ripping up that floor was the most exhausting thing I've done so far. You couldn't pay me enough to ever have to do it again.

Thanks again for your help. I appreciate it.

I am glad that some of the guys could be some help. Don't forget to come back.

thanks for the great topic as well @j4bs4209333 Don't forget to come back.