Setting the Scene - as of last night

Doors in the kitchen! The (pocket) door on the left leads to the bathroom, and the door on the right leads to my bedroom.

Behind Door Number One: More doors! And trim..

...and more trim..

Behind Door Number Two: The bathroom! My mirror still has its cardboard protection, but I figure that's probably for the best right now!

Out in the living room, the bay window has been scraped and sanded down..getting ready for a fresh coat of paint.

Speaking of paint, the fireplace is looking brighter these days! This is just the primer coat..I still haven't totally decided on a color yet.. More to come!

I fall down enough without help.

A few weeks ago, when we were really getting into building walls and prepping everything for electrical and plumbing work, we decided to level up the floor in my bedroom.

The floor in the bedroom itself was not out of level, but there was a pretty good drop off between the kitchen and the bedroom and the floor in the original closet sloped quite a bit.

The drop off between bedroom and kitchen. This is where I fall on my face.

As we tore out the old walls and removed the old ceiling, we found the area that was used as a closet was originally part of the laundry room, which, again, was originally a porch. In an effort to help the porch floor shed water it was sloped toward the backyard. When the porch was later enclosed and that space annexed for the master closet, the floor was left as is.

All of this wouldn’t have been a problem, had we not moved the closet.

We moved the closet for a few reasons. First, and most importantly: the door to the bedroom was small in height and width. We wouldn’t be able to do anything about the width because of the adjacent pocket door to the bathroom and a sewer vent pipe running up through the wall on the other side of the bedroom door opening.

Small bedroom door to the left. New opening is just to the right of the old opening.

Because of these challenges, we elected to move the door to the “fridge wall” in the kitchen – this will afford me a larger door while allowing the vent to remain in place, but you would then enter into what used to be the closet. So, we moved the closet over to where the bedroom door was originally and provided an additional buffer between the bathroom and the bedroom. Now, I won’t hear guests singing in the shower while I’m trying to sleep AND I’ll be able to move furniture in and out of my bedroom (without tripping!) much easier than before.

Leveling the floor:

We could only do this in good conscience because the floor was in solid shape. If there were settling or rot issues, the right thing to do would have been to remove the floor entirely and deal with those issues appropriately.

Notice how thick the strip is here..

..and here. In roughly 8', the floor dropped almost two inches in the old closet.

Using a level, find the highest and lowest points in the room. Starting from the high point, establish a level point using shims, furring strips, or two-by-fours depending on how out of level you are. As you progress across the floor toward your low point, the strips will get thicker, so take that into account when establishing your high point/first row. Secure those pieces to the floor using construction adhesive and screws to minimize future squeaking. From there, it’s as simple as ensuring that each strip is level in its own right, but also level with the surrounding strips.

I feel bad about covering these floors..

It probably sounds complicated because I’m horrible at explaining things like this without talking with my hands. I promise, it’s simple. Once you’ve got your mind wrapped around it, it goes pretty quickly.

From there, we used ¾” tongue and groove plywood to provide more rigidity to the floor while also helping bring the bedroom floor into level with the kitchen floor at the new threshold we had created. The plywood was glued and screwed into the strips – again for rigidity and to eliminate future squeaking.

Vent pipe (center) with the new doorway to the right.

Good to go!

Once this is done, lay your level down, watch the bubble, and drink a beer to celebrate your accomplishment! Once your beer is finished, you’re ready for dancing on your new floor J

Progress!

It’s official! I have a new key on my key ring and a dumpster in my driveway – all the issues pertaining to the easement have been cleared up, and demolition has begun. Hardcore.

The first order of business was showing the place off. In my excitement, I didn’t actually take interior pictures of the house before we started…duh. In my defense, we started tearing wallpaper off the wall during a tour (enthusiastic participants) – it left very little time to grab my phone and start recording.

Dining Room

Master Bedroom

Since removing all the wallpaper (From all the walls. In all the rooms.), the next most pressing interior issue was the bathroom. The walls were covered in a minty green paneling fastened to the wall with metal nail strips. I’ve never really seen anything like it..so I knew it had to go. Along with the paneling were an older vanity, and a tub/shower unit that had been custom-made into a handicap accessible shower stall. I really should have taken pictures of that – they did a great job on the retrofit. Alas, it’s all gone and the smell of new lumber now permeates the space.

New lumber, you say? Why yes! Because the bathroom – like the rest of the house – is small, the fact that there were two doors to the space left very little room for traffic flow of any other kind. My solution: pocket doors. We removed the existing door jambs, beefed up the wall structure as needed, and installed two pocket door kits. Not including the doors, the kits cost $55 each. Considering the space these new door systems will buy me, I consider that time and money well spent.

Ta-da!

The real story in the bathroom was the floor. Not only were there two layers of linoleum and a layer of  small hexagonal green tile, there was also a 5 inch layer of solid concrete.  …sorry, what?

After the main portion of the house was built in the late 1860’s, there were several smaller additions: the kitchen first, bathroom second, what is now the master bedroom, and the laundry area which was originally a porch. It is thought that the bathroom space was originally used as a porch as well – then possibly a pantry for the adjoining kitchen. Which would partially explain the concrete. They may have also done it to thumb their nose at future owners of the house..who knows?

In any event, we removed the layers of flooring, broke up the concrete, and decided that it would actually be way easier to re-plumb and wire the room if the entire floor system was gone. Because the “new additions” are all over a crawl space and I don’t get along with spiders, the subfloor was removed and most all of the work was done from above rather than in the dark, scary recesses of the unknown. Once the subfloor had been removed, we were able to cut out the old copper pipes for scrap and replace them with PEX tubing.

Concrete taken from the bathroom floor. Newspaper: Des Moines Register - May 4, 1930

Results of the bathroom demolition.

For those of you not familiar with PEX, it is glorious. Think PVC, but flexible. It takes a lot of the time, effort, and frustration out of plumbing. While the material itself may be more expensive, people love it because it takes no time at all to install. We had my old pipes cut out and replaced in an afternoon. Throughout the entire house. Crawlspace be damned. You will have to buy a couple special tools: one to cut the pipe and another to crimp the little rings that seal any joints you have in your lines. Otherwise, with a couple dollars worth of T’s, elbows, couplings and the like, you’ve got yourself some fancy new plumbing without burrowing through a crawlspace with a torch.

OK, I guess sometimes you still have to burrow through a crawlspace. No torch necessary, though!

Once the major work below the floor was done, we sistered new boards to the existing floor joists to bring them up to grade with where the adjoining floors will be once tiled/refinished. Had the floor joists been in poor shape, this would have been impossible, so that was a lucky break! With the new joist system in place, we laid a sturdy layer of ¾” plywood down to stiffen things up, followed by a half inch layer of Durock cement board which will eventually receive the travertine tile I picked up on sale.

There are other projects in the works, but to list them all here would be overwhelming. We’re finding –as everyone does – that once we tear into one thing it leads to tearing into something else, and something else, and round and round we go. I’ll update again very soon as there are a lot of exciting changes happening!

Have a great weekend!