68 Frolic, 1st time restoration

I removed the old flooring:


Until recently I had been planning to keep the old flooring, original--fifty-four-years old. A couple of weeks ago I changed my mind. The Frolic will have a new floor. Leaning on the wisdom above, that meant the old was coming out. I soon found that the old floor liked being stuck to the subfloor. The eviction wouldn't be easy.





The membrane that makes up the top layer of the sheet-flooring came off fairly easily, though a good bit of elbow grease was required. That left a layer of black fibrous stuff. A stand-up scraper and a putty knife didn't faze it much at all. I tried a wire brush on my grinder. It sort of worked but made a horrendous mess. The belt sander was of little use. As far as machines, my oscillating tool with a scraper blade did pretty well, but it was still slow going.



Finally, I thought I'd wet the stuff down. At first, the H2O ran off the stuff like water off a duck, but I found that if I rubbed it in--I found sort of painting it with a broom worked well--the nasty black stuff would mostly surrender to the stand-up scraper. This was much appreciated by my old back and knees. What remained could be cared for pretty quickly with the oscillating tool. 
I have overcome. More here,  68frolic.blogspot.com/2022/01/removing-old-flooring-and-paint-and.html

I'm not sure, yet, what I'm going to put back. I'm leaning toward a laminate, but I'm open to suggestions.
I'd especially like to hear from folk who put down flooring in the past and are still pleased with it, or wish they had done something else.
Keep warm,
Preacher