Day Two: Bathroom Renovation Project 8 - Taking up the floor

Day Two. Taking up the floor and baseboard. 

The first thing we exposed, actually on the evening of Day One, was the plumbing. Here, below, the sink drain and water lines.

Here, the sink drain leading back to the rat's nest that is the tub, toilet and main drain.

Toilet drain. The original installation cut through virtually the entire joist. An issue to sleep on overnight.

Another issue to sleep on overnight: the main beam under the west wall of the bathroom (and above the dining room wall downstairs) has split. 

Splitting is not uncommon, and on the surface it looks like an old split, but when we tip our heads down into the cavity and look inside, there is a bit of fresh splitting. As this is the beam that takes all the weight of the joists under the bathroom, the tub's weight, etc., stabilizing it is important.

Next, the rest of the floor and the baseboard came up. The baseboard was fastened with tons of giant square nails. We've had countless discussions about the baseboard over the past six months. To take up or not. To re-use or not.

The primary issue is the leveling of the floor. A good part of Day Two was devoted to assessing the level of the floor. It slopes 4" diagonally from the NE to the SW corner. After much traipsing up and down to the basement, to determine how much of that is due to the whole house settling in the middle and how much is slope on the second floor, we decide to bring the SW corner, where the tub will be, up about 2". This will make the bath floor more level, bring the bath floor up even with the hall floor, which has two floors on top of the wide-plank pine, and still leaves us the option of jacking up the main beam in the basement someday and bringing the whole house closer to level.

I'm not convinced we ever will level the whole house, or even attempt it, but the basic idea is to make the bath more level and yet leave it in sync somewhat with the general characteristic sloping of the whole.

At that point, we call it a day and make our first trip to Home Depot, before a very late dinner.