Getting there. I spent a few hours after work on Wednesday hacking away at the wood squares on the kitchen floor with the claw end of a hammer. Fire in my lower back and very slow progress. Yesterday I decided that I had to find something more efficient, so after work I wandered around the Ace Hardware around the corner, eventually settling on a Stanley Super Wonder Bar as my weapon of choice. This worked exponentially better for prying up chunks of flooring rather than splintering with the hammer. That is not a Wonder Bar pictured in the left-hand picture below, just a regular old metal bar that I found in our garage that came in handy a couple times today. Still explosions in my lower back, but nothing I can do about that I guess.

Today I put in probably ten hours flailing away on the eight billion nails, staples, and glue. Having some amazing entertaining college basketball games running in the background helped, as did making visible progress. As it stands now the kitchen is stripped to the original subfloor and ready to be rebuilt (which may or may not happen this weekend). I’ve just started planning the tile layout (as seen in the picture on the right). Nothing fancy, but I think it’ll end up looking decent.