Literally a Breakthrough

I was really distraught on Monday morning because of those floors. It was a major pain in the a** and a lot of chisseling just to get very few results. I think I was on a pace of 2 sqft per hour. I didn’t see how I was going to be able to finish my closet (roughly 6 x 8) in time for the carpet to get installed. I was willing to have Jen's closet just carpeted over the old hardwood. Then, pure dumb luck hit. I was ripping up this small 3”x6” piece (which was taking me about 10 minutes), and it was ripping up not only the glue, but the flooring below the glue. The farther I went, the more subfloor it ripped up. It was like trying to pick a dangling piece off a scab, but getting the whole scab with it. I thought I was going to have to replace the subfloor because of it. So, I got my circular saw and tried to cut it off before it got worse. I knew I had to cut a bit into the subfloor to do it, but was thinking it would be only for this one spot. So I cut, and pulled up “the scab”. I noticed a staple under the scab, so I picked at it a bit more. I noticed that I hadn’t been cutting into the subfloor, rather it was a thin piece of plywood that the flooring installer must have put down to keep the glue from seeping through to the main level of the house. So, I got my circular saw and started cutting at that depth. The picture below shows what I had done up until that point and the result of my literal "breakthrough". After that, I was able to remove chunks that were 2’ by 3’ large, and ripped up the rest of the floor in about an hour and a half. Now I just have to figure out how to leave a nice line of existing flooring in the doorway. The circular saw is only capable of cutting within a few inches of the doorframe, so I have to figure out how to extend that cut. That's a much smaller problem than the one I used to have though.