I'm ripping up the floors in my kitchen, which are, in order... floating laminate, linoleum, different linoleum, particleboard, plywood subfloor. I want to take it all the way down to the plywood subfloor. The laminate is incredibly easy to remove, as is the first layer of linoleum, but the particleboard / gluey bottom mess of linoleum is a pain. I'm currently just working away at the edge of it by prying at it with a crowbar and a deadblow mallet, which works okay, but I feel like there must be a more efficient method.

Any ideas? The issue is that I can't get the bottom layer of linoleum separated from the particleboard, which means I can't see the nails, which means that I have to just randomly pry away at the edge of the boards. The boards crumble, because it's crap particleboard, and sometimes I get lucky and find a nail but not usually.

Thanks!

You could try using your circular saw and an old blade you no longer love, to cut through the lino AND the particle board into approximately 2 foot squares, and remove both at once. Set your depth of cut fairly accurately so as not to cut through the plywood sub-floor.
A three or four foot wrecking bar will pull up these newly formed small squares.

Well, in the interest of saving money, I just got a much bigger wrecking bar. I can slide it under the floor length-wise and pry it up from there and the whole deal comes up pretty darn quick.

That does not look like fun.

Pretty common out here. I just ripped up a floor that was 3/4 ply-vinyl-luan-vinyl-paneling-glue down parquet. The original 3/4 plywood went under the cabinets. It took an entire day to rip up 100sf. Lots of fun, and bad words.

Bad words?? Why ?? lol

Haha, I finally finished it! Used a wonderbar and a giant wrecking bar, so I'd pry up with the small bar and then slide the big one in there. Took about 8 hours to do 200 sq/ft.

When I run accross that I'll give you a call ! What's your number ?

Dont know if this has been mentioned before but for future reference I find this tool great for most tearout jobs. Ceramic, plywood, hardwood, etc.

http://www.thegutster.com/

Keith

I just bought one of those gutsters to finish up removing about 200 sf of particle board underlayment. I removed about 1200 sf with a hammer and prybar and man was that dumb. 1200 sf with hammer and prybar = 8 hours vs. 200 sf with gutster = 30 minutes. The 30 minutes was by myself, the 8 hours was with a helper.

The gutster is one of the best demo tools I've ever owned.

Jeff