To prepare for our radiant floor heating, we had to remove all the layers of flooring down to the original 130 year old wood flooring.  I thought this could wait until last until I realized the nails from the sub flooring could possibly puncture the radiant heat’s PEX tubing.  The layers consisted of: carpet, foam, wood paneling subfloor, linoleum, amazingly preserved newspapers from 1953, paint, and finally the original wood flooring.

The original wood flooring is in decent condition, but not perfect.  When the house was retrofitted with electric, they simply tore up the floor boards above where they needed to run wires, breaking the tongue & groove.  These should be replaced.

There was also some water damage where we are putting the new bathroom.  After some thinking we decided to take up the floor boards and replace them with 3/4″ plywood in order to have a better base for the tile.  Hopefully we will be able to save enough boards to replace the other damaged areas.