grinding halt

bryan began kitchen demo today. he emptied the breakfast room and began pulling up the floor. beneath the carpet, he found the original linoleum flooring from when the house was built, glued directly to the plywood. since our house was built in the 1960s there is a good chance that the linoleum, glue, or both contain asbestos. bryan immediately halted work and called the insurance company; he is on his way to a local lab to have them test a sample so we know for sure. the test takes a week. if it's positive we'll have to decide if we want to a) tile over it, thereby raising the floor level, which may make for an awkward 1" step into the kitchen, or b) hire someone to remove it, which costs god knows what.

like i said, grinding halt. i can't be too upset about it; i knew we would run into snags, and this is only the first (albeit hopefully worst) one.

** UPDATE: as soon as bryan handed the lab guy the sample, he said, "oh yea, that's asbestos. we get this exact tile all the time. we'll test it, but here's a list of removal companies." so that's that.