Fixing The Bathroom Floor

I laid out our plan of attack for the bathroom in “Starting On The Hall Bathroom.” In “Hall Bathroom Remodel: Preliminaries“, I told how we strengthened our bouncy floor and took quite a bit of the sag our of it. The next step, was the bathroom floor itself.

The problem was water damage to the floor where the toilet had been.

Water damage left the floor rotted and weak

One option would have been to pull up and replace the entire floor. That option wasn’t even entertained. The second option was to do as we did in the kitchen, replace that section of the floor.

Damaged section of the floor removed

The joist was strengthened and a box made for toilet plumbing

So far so good. A sister joist was added and a box framed out for the toilet drainage. He allowed for a 12 inch rough in, the old rough in was 14 inches.

Then the real fun began. The original floor in the bathroom is 7/8 inch oak tongue and groove. The problem is, 7/8 inch thick flooring, subflooring, plywood, etc., isn’t manufactured anymore.

These size differences in building materials have been a problem with all the repairs we’ve done on our house. For example, when this house was built in the 1920s, 2x4s were true 2x4s, i.e. a true two inches by four inches. The last 2x4s we bought, were actually 1.5 inches by 3 & 5/8. Now we needed 7/8ths worth of subfloor. Of the choices available, nothing added up to 7/8 no matter how we stacked them. We were always an eighth of an inch short.

In the end we used Dan made up that 1/8 inch difference with roofing shingles. I missed the photo op for that, but can report that the subfloor is now sturdy and solid underfoot.

Repair complete. Floor is nice and solid now.

Some of you might be wondering, why bother to go to all that trouble? Why not just replace the entire floor? Wouldn’t it be easier? The answer to that is twofold.

First is cost. Our budget enables us to make improvements on the house, but only paycheck by paycheck. The difference between $100 worth of materials and $1000 worth of materials, is weeks of waiting in between projects, while we save up the money to make the purchase.

The second is quality. Dan has said several times that the quality of the materials in this home is far superior than anything we can buy today. If the same house had been made with today’s materials, it likely would have fallen down long ago.

In addition it was well put together. Between all the heavy duty nails and the age of the wood, the deconstruction we have done, has unfortunately busted up the materials. Dan deplores the waste, so we leave what we can as is, and work around it.

Now we can get on to projects with showier results. Hopefully I’ll have an oooo or an ahhhh to show you next time.

Source: