At the end of our nails

When the first layer of linoleum was laid over the fir floors many years ago, in some places for whatever reason, they needed pieces of paper.  We’ve random bits of old cardboard covering the soon to be refinished hardwood floors.  The lid of this old Camel cigarette box is above all my favorite stray bit.

In the days when they were laying this linoleum, the glue was not very good.  Whoever laid this old linoleum was a master at sealing the seams with nails.  Long before the days of the nailing gun, this floor was secured with tiny little nails on each side of the seams no farther than 1/2 inch apart.  Let me tell you, these seams are everywhere!

In addition to that, there are the nails holding down the tack strips and the staples holding down the foam for the carpet that came later.  We’ve been pulling nails out of these floors for the last 3 weeks.  Being a bit nerdy, I saved the nails.  Being even nerdier, today we divided them and counted them to see how many there were, because we knew it was A LOT!!!  This picture doesn’t even begin to do this task justice.  After the count we’ve pulled out 2500 nails!  One at a time!

All these nails were pulled out by a small, but impressive  crew of nail pulling maniacs!  We found having the right tools is what truly makes the difference.