Downstairs bathroom floors -9-15-06

When we got the house the main downstairs bathroom floor looked pretty good. We thought it would just need to be refinished. Half of the floor was covered by linoleum. I pulled the linoleum up and found this:


Damn. It's a wonder the tub and toilet didnt go crashing into the crawlspace...

I pulled up the floor (being very careful to salvage what boards I could) and discovered another floor underneath it:



It's nice wide-plank heartpine but unfortunately it's in really bad shape.

I went ahead and pulled it up also and found this:



All three of the joists are rotted, not only that but they are notch-cut so they are splitting too. I decided to remove them instead of sistering them because I'm not a big fan of notch-cutting floor joists.

I pulled them out and replaced them with pressure-treated 2x8's and metal joist hangers.


As you can see the plumbers have replaced all the old cast iron pluming with new PVC / CPVC.

Next I laid a sub-floor of 3/8 plywood. I should have gone with 5/8 in hindsight but it's too late now:


I made sure to mark off where the joists are so it's easier to nail the new flooring in.

Then it was time for the new flooring. We have a bunch of 5 1/8" Southern yellow pine T&G flooring that we got for $1.50 sq/ft. Cant beat that price though I really wanted heart pine.

I laid the new flooring in, this was my first time ever laying flooring and I think it came out great considering. The first board took forever to get just right but the rest went pretty quickly.




I called the floor guys in to finish the floor so we could get a working bathroom in the house ASAP. It's no fun having to run up to Burger King every time nature calls...

They came out and showed me a bunch of samples but none looked just right. Most of the rest of the house is heart pine, I wanted something that either would match that or compliment it. The morning they came out to stain I ran to home depot and found Red Chestnut stain by Minwax. I bought it and came home to try it out on a scrap piece of flooring. It looked pretty good so I told them to use that.

Here are the results:



I'm amazed at how much it looks like heart pine! the floor guys were really amazed too. the floor looks really glossy in the pics because it was still wet. We decided to go with a satin finish to keep with the period.

Well that's it for the floors. Next was to install the beadboard. I'll post that next.