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June 25, 2005
bathroom floor demo
I've spent the last few days pulling up the downstairs bathroom floor.
We're back on track, maybe. There were a few things stopping us for a while (termite damage, a sagging floor joist, getting banned from the dump) and a few things sucking all of our free time (grad school, making $$$), but everything seems to be aligned ok for at least the next few weeks.
2 layers of linoleum, 2 layers of 1/8 ply, over the original floor or 1/2" ply.
Towards getting better access to the sagging floor joist and also just because it was fucked anyway, I pulled up the bathroom floor downstairs. It has been rewarding every time that we've dug into something like this, in that is has been obvious that it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, we keep finding spots of water damaged or termited wood.
I attacked the floor with a circular saw and the sawsall, and a giant hammer that the first plumbers left here way back when. Getting the floor pulled up exposed the crawlspace underneath the house. That is a little creepy, but thankfully nothing gross popped up. Given our habit of finding mummies and skeletons, I was actually quite surprised. Seeing all of the water lines sprawled uninsulated across the dirt reminded me of our freeze-up back in January.
The floor and joists here were eaten up by leaky toilets & tubs, and hacked carpentry & plumbing. The damage seems confined to a few specific areas. Most glaring is a joist that was cut to provide access for the toilet drainage pipe. The sill plate and wall studs look to be in great condition, though. It'll be nice to get this all back together.
Hacked joist for toilet drainage.
Sometimes this smelled bad. Some of the wood was so infused with urine that cutting through it would create a cloud of what I started to think of as 'pee pee dust'. Making all of that go away is reason enough for having done this...
Posted by john m at June 25, 2005 8:30 AM
Comments
Not a fun job. I've done it a few times and breathed more than my share of pee pee dust. I remember the first time I had to crawl under a house I had to take a few minutes to psyche myself up for it. Now I crawl under there just like I'm walking to the market.
Posted by: Grex at June 25, 2005 11:14 AM
Bravo! There's something that's just thrilling about ripping things apart in one's house. Scary....but thrilling. It doesn't really feel like it's mine until I do it....but getting up the nerve can take me months. ;-)
Posted by: Niely Morgan at June 26, 2005 7:42 PM
Come over my house and finish my bathroom....I'll never get done
Posted by: at June 27, 2005 7:06 PM
ha! you haven't been paying attention -- we don't finish ANYTHING...
Posted by: john m at June 28, 2005 9:26 AM
One of my houses was an old nip joint, in fact when I bought it there was a homemade bar on the first floor and a craps table upstairs. There was no bathroom upstairs, so the fellas would urinate out the window onto the metal roof of the bathroom addition below. After a time the metal roof rusted and rotted, you get where I am going with this...
I tried to save the old bathroom, but every board seemed pissier than the next and eventually there was nothing left. I had to re-build the entire bathroom from scratch. Such the joys of home renovation!
Posted by: BillC at June 28, 2005 12:21 PM
The bathroom demo looks sort of scary. I don't think I'd have the guts to take on a project like that; good on you! I have to ask, though...how did you get banned from the dump?
Posted by: fearthainn at June 28, 2005 1:07 PM
i'm so lame... i fet a sense of accomplishment when we painted our bathroom... man.. that looks like quite teh task..
Posted by: chrisb at August 6, 2005 7:27 PM
I have a bathroom that is leaking into the basement. I don't know exactly where the leak is and the beam in the basement needs to be replaced. What I want to know is, can I fix it without tearing up my floor if I can get to it from the basement?
Posted by: Roscoe at January 21, 2006 11:52 PM
I'd think so. We tore into our because just so much of the floor and joists were damaged there, and because the crawl space is very shallow under our house.
Posted by: john at January 22, 2006 8:31 PM
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