Concerning a Bedroom Floor

Good evening, my readers - all both of you lol. Anyway, today I worked on my bedroom floor. I've decided, after having decided once upon a time to go with carpeting for the bedroom, to go with wood laminate flooring. Why? Well, easier to keep clean for one thing. And much cheaper than carpeting for another! Plus there's the added fact I can lay the laminate, with help, whereas I'd have to pay to have the carpeting laid down in order to have it done professionally. In any case, laminate's the way I'm going to go. As such, I needed to put down plywood over the current floor, since the gaps between the boards allowed too much airflow from outside, and this winter, that wouldn't be a good thing at all!

So, to begin, I pulled up the tack strip that I'd left on the floor. Next, I pulled off the baseboards (yes, after painting them lol).

It's very interesting seeing what's in the walls of this house. Or maybe "interesting" isn't the right word. Perhaps disturbing is?

In this last picture above, you'll note the old wallpaper on the right and the old netting used to mount the old wallpaper. Evidently, as in the bathroom, the paneling was just put on over the old wallpaper. In all the pictures, you'll notice the dirt, cobwebs, and other stuff hidden in the walls. I swept and vacuumed as much as that stuff out as I could.

After getting the baseboards off, I then faced a problem with the closet door trim. It reached down to the floor itself, and I didn't have any desire to remove it from the wall just to try and shorten it. So, I attempted a couple of different methods of sawing it off. I started with a handsaw, which just wasn't, no pun intended, "cutting" it. Then I tried a Fat Max blade, but it's more intended for plastic or metal. I considered the hacksaw, but, again, it's more intended for metal than wood. So, I decided to improvise and used the jig saw at an angle. It worked out fairly well.

At one point, I also made a discovery of an old note hidden behind one of the baseboards. It was evidently from or to a teacher, and was written in 1973 (I would guess, based on the two dates mentioned in the note). I wonder at what point it fell behind the baseboard?

In case you can't read it, it says:
"Enclosed are reviews requested -
     1. Brazeale - regular review was to be due 7/10/73
     2. Mike Parker - regular review to be due 11/28/73.
This is why the performances are marked Special. They are on an annual basis - Thanks. Peggy McQueen"

Anyway, I then proceeded to lay down the plywood sheets. Four of them were able to be laid without having to cut them, except for one occasion when I had to drill a hole for the cable coming up through the floor - and then had to cut a channel through the plywood to the hole with the jig saw in order to get the cable to it.

I impressed the heck out of myself by being able to measure the hole correctly. The channel I cut after the fact, but it wasn't a big deal at all, even though I cut it too narrow the first time and had to go back and widen it afterwards lol. But, it's done now!

I wasn't sure exactly the best way to lay the plywood; I knew I could lay four of them before I'd have to start cutting them up into pieces. So, I just started as I thought would be best.

And then I started cutting pieces to fit between them. Wasn't too bad, really, although I was limited to using the jig saw for the cutting (I had access to a circular saw, but had too many people telling me not to use it lol), so my cuts were anything but straight! Can't tell that too much in the above pictures, but in these next two, it's pretty obvious!

But who cares, right? I mean, this is subflooring. And even if it did matter, it's not as if the house is at all square, which is why there are small gaps between some of the full sheets and some of the walls. But anyway, I persevered, and managed to finish laying the plywood on the entire bedroom floor (minus the closet - haven't gotten to that just yet, as it's going to be pretty interesting cutting the plywood for that space).

The closet floor has some markings on it that look like they might have come from either the original walls of the closet (since it's most likely this closet was added at the same time the bathroom was carved out) or perhaps some sort of built-in cabinet that might have served as the closet, or some other purpose entirely. Whatever it is, it's pretty interesting to see things like this from who knows how long ago.

The outline's pretty clearly defined in the above picture. Notice it goes under the current back wall of the closet, of course. It'll be interesting to find out, when I can get to the closet in the front bedroom again to rip out the carpeting, if it continues over there (I'm fairly certain it does). Now, as it turns out, I'm not quite as finised with the plywood as I thought.

For some reason, I didn't notice the "hump" over by the bathroom wall. It appears the floor slopes down between the joist in the bedroom and the one under the bathroom wall, at least where we added in the new 1x4's. So, tomorrow I'm going to have to remove the screws from the smaller piece in that corner and from the end of the larger piece and see if I can use some sort of shims to prop that part up. After all, the laminate floats on the floor, so it won't follow any depressions like that. It's gonna need something underneath to support it. It's typical that every time I think I've completed something, I discover (or have pointed out to me) that I missed something or have to redo it for whatever reason lol. Oh well, live and learn!

On a final note, I love this view from my bedroom window (the west-facing one). It's so nice to look out of my window and see trees, grass, anything but asphalt and drug dealers! Although that big piece of paneling out there, which will someday be attached to the wall to cover up the tub plumbing, does sort of detract from the view!