Message board topic:

First day of working on the kitchen floor is over.  I always assume that a job like this is going to be harder than it should be, but I wasn't counting on it being 5 or 6 times as hard.  Getting the refrigerator out, unhooking and removing the gas stove, and that enormous wood hutch of Cheri's outside on the driveway was a job all in itself.

First problem was layer after layer of flooring.  2 layers of carpet, particle board, 70s style wall paneling, linoleum, and a couple of layers of wood slats.  Cutting through the floor, we nicked a water pipe.  Not a big problem but we had to shut the water off outside and repair it.  Tearing through the floor was long, tedious and noisy.  Then put in new 6 inch sills to replace the old, rotten 4 inch sills.  In the process, a toy car, a toy motorcycle rider, (without the motorcycle) and a baseball fell out of the west wall.  Why it was in the wall, I can't imagine.

Then we found another water leak, 2 feet under ground.  The ground was soaked, a muddy mess, and the wood nearby was saturated.  The old pipe was galvanized steel, which over time had still rusted.  Quite a bit of pipe had to be replaced.  Done.

We have to pass through the kitchen to get to the bathroom, or pretty much anyplace else in the house but it had already been 13 hours and everybody was beat.  So, we layed just enough flooring to get across to the bathroom and called it a night, with a gaping hole in 3 quarters of what used to be the kitchen floor.

Tonight, pretty much everything that was in the kitchen, the refrigerator, stove, the kitchen table and giant hutch are still sitting in the driveway.  The refrigerator is still full of food so we ran an extension cord to an outlet outside.  It's not supposed to rain but if it does, Cheri will panic.  Tomorrow, the rest of the floor goes in, then it gets overlaid with some tough, nice looking flooring.  Then all the kitchen stuff gets dragged back in and Cheri can spend the next 2 or 3 days putting all her stuff back in place.  After that, I have to go work down on the Lake, which means I'll be gone before hardly any of it is done, but there will be 3 guys to finish it all up.  John

Just READING your comments is exhausting....what a huge job to undertake....John, you need a nap !!!

Patty

John, like Patty I am also exhausted from reading your post about the new flooring going in. What a mess! In the long run, it will be worth it. Keeping my fingers crossed the rest of the project goes well and finishes up quickly and praying for no rain. Peggy

 

Peggy, Angel Laila and Angel Minchie

 

cat-a-holic.blogspot.com

  I thought a lot of times about doing it myself, but we didn't get very far before I realized, A, I didn't know what I was doing and B, a lot of it would have been impossible for one person, especially getting all that heavy stuff through the door.  Not to mention, I wouldn't know anything about gas stove hookups and could have blown us all up.  The old floor was really shot and caving in or I wouldn't have touched it, although if I fell through, I would have gone down at most a foot or so.

I hate naps because I always feel worse when I wake up, but getting so little sleep and the work going on so long, I actually napped for about an hour and a half.   just couldn't stay awake.  I got very little sleep again last night, but I have to play down on the Lake tonight, so I may be looking at another nap.

The animals are not taking all the noise well.  Van Gogh has been banned to the bedroom but ventures out to peek at the kitchen once in a while, only go sneak back in the bedroom.  The dog barks almost constantly.  Only Piggy seems unperturbed by everything going on, but because it's a long walk around the house to get to the refrigerator, he only got fed once yesterday, rather than the normal twice, although he does have hay around the clock.  John

Well, it was pretty clear that I didn't know exactly what I was doing.  The sills I put in are a lot stronger than the ones we took out, but I spaced them a little farther apart than I should have, which would have been fine, but then I only put in one layer of subfloor.  I should have put in 2, or put the sills closer together.  The result is, it's a little spongey.  It should be fine as long as I don't ride an elephant through the kitchen but if I did, I'd be really careful.  Live and learn.

When I went to work Saturday, I left 2 guys laying the surface flooring and I had no idea what it would look like when I got back.  When I did, everything looked great!  It was not a good idea having carpeting in the kitchen anyway but that was here when I moved in.  Now it looks great and should be much cleaner.

The best part was, I found 3 water leaks under the house.  One was on the far side, where the main pipe comes up out of the ground.  2 feet down in a muddy mess was a galvanized pipe elbow that was leaking and got replaced.  One water leak was probably caused when we cut through the floor, and the pipe was right there.  The other leak was where the water line headed up to the sink, and we were evidently losing a lot of hot water through it.  All fixed.  I hope.

The whole thing, including the help and materials, cost about $3000.  Could have been a lot worse.  I underestimated the subfloor I'd need by about 12 square feet, and I way overestimated the surface flooring by a lot.  I should have enough left to do the utility room and the bathroom and still have some left over.  The utility room and bathroom are both on concrete though, so I won't have to tear out and replace any flooring, just make what's there look nice.

You can see here, where one of the sills under the floor had broken, causing everything to cave toward the center.  

Wow! So what does it look like now?

 

David and the CoolCyberCats

Forever in my heart





Cats Nap. Only Humans Put Them "To Sleep": Sterilize, Don't Euthanize!