One of the big questions I had in buying this house was what was under the floors. The inspector's pictures of the underside of the house showed oak floors, seemingly in decent shape. I've been really looking forward to getting in and taking up the carpet/linoleum/laminate to reveal that..This is what we found we we pulled up a corner of one of the bedrooms:
If you've seen Beetlejuice, maybe you get the reference in the title. If not, suffice it to say there's a scene in the movie where the Maitlands have to dig through several layers of flooring and padding that look very much like what our short investigation today revealed. Except that I didn't notice any unidentifiable rotted black substance in the movie. I'm freaked to think what the stuff beneath the carpet, pad, and two layers of linoleum may be. All I know is that it ain't oak.
The second bedroom was different but equally nasty. The linoleum in the corner there had disintegrated into a white, plaster-like paste. I had to pull the carpet back about two feet to discover that it used to be vinyl with a fancy fleur de lis pattern.
The plan was to remove the carpet and stuff to determine whether the floors were even worth trying to save or whether, in the process of leveling the foundation, it was irrelevant if some were cracked. Looks like the answer will be the latter, but we're still going to try. I have this fear, though, that it's only going to get worse as we keep going.
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