One of my favorite tasks when renovating is the demolition process. Â But for this project I took the role as observer and watched the contractors do their thing. Â One thing I did envy was having several people to assist in carrying out the debris. Â In my experience, I usually have to take my Milwaukee Sawzall out and cut cabinetry in smaller pieces that I can handle. Â I know having a dumspster in front of the house makes the neighbors cringe, but frankly I see them as a necessity. Â Trying to haul cabinets to the dump using a pick up truck or small trailer is a real time killer.
Instead of using the Hilti TE-905 like me to remove vinyl flooring, the young guys had several of the manual floor scrapers with teeth to remove the layers of vinyl that lay beneath the hardwood flooring. Â The excessive glue made this part tough. Â I wish I had brought the Hilti with the 8 inch scraper blade with me on this
day. Â What would have taken me 15 minutes, literally took 5 hours of two men scraping up little sections of vinyl at a time. Â But after two days of destruction and cleaning, the room was cleared to the plywood on the floor and to the bare drywall on the vertical surfaces.
Following demolition, we ripped a three foot section of drywall out to be replaced with Hardiebacker Board.  Backer comes in three by five sheets so this was a quick and dirty way to ensure no mildew or moisture problems that drywall has when used behind sinks and backsplashes.  In the photo you can see the backer board already installed.
Looking at the bottom of the photo you can see the .5 inch Durock installed. The flooring contractor was great, he laid a base of thinset on the 3/4 plywood and set the flooring backer in place.  The following day, he came back and shot backer screws into the Durock.  To say the flooring substrate was level and firmly attached  would be an understatement.  Frankly, they did a better job than I would have.  Next the wiring will need to be run before the cabinets can be installed.
