Kitchen Travails

Today, the concentration was on the kitchen. While we had planned to put up the bathroom wall, with the window in it, we ended up working on the huge holes in the kitchen floor. The nights have started getting cooler, and with the gaping hole, even though it was covered with the plywood (and the smaller holes had smaller pieces of wood jammed into them), it made more sense to go ahead and get the floor fixed.

First though, I don't think I've posted a picture of the window that I've decided to go with for the bathroom wall. Here are the pics for that:

Now, as for the kitchen, we tore up the rest of the broken and rotted boards (as well as some that were perfectly fine but were in the way) in the big corner area between my bedroom door and the laundry room. After removing the boards, of course we had to remove the nails, and then we had to decide how far under the walls we wanted to go. It was pretty much a given that we had to go under the laundry room wall as far as the boards extended. They terminated at a joist under there, and the plywood would have to go that far in order to be securely attached and not have any support at that end. However, it turned out that a rotted board ran parallel under my bedroom wall, and we debated for a while whether or not to remove that one. Finally we did, and replaced it with a 1x4, cutting out a notch to maneuver around the one beam that came up through the floor and continued into the wall.

With that done, it was then time to scab over the rotted joist that came from under my bedroom floor. That joist joins up with the kitchen joist under my bedroom wall. However, a good portion of that joist was rotted, from where it teamed up with the kitchen joist to the end, a good four feet or so. Unfortunately, because it rotted from the beginning of the kitchen joist, it caused support problems, not only in that portion of the kitchen, but in the corner of my bedroom just on the other side of the kitchen wall. And the joist between it and the laundry room wall had some rot issues as well. The solution? Scab over both joists with the 10 foot 1x6 we still had left over from the bathroom floor job.

However, has anything ever gone smoothly in this house? If you've been following this blog, you know the answer to that is a definitive NO! And this job was no exception! The main problem with the joist scab was that the scab had to be on the side with the rotted bedroom joist. However, that meant there was a good three to four feet of nothing to attach the 1x6 to, as a good 2 1/4" seperated that length of the scab from the kitchen joist. While pondering a solution, our eyes just happened to catch an old twin bed headboard that the previous owners had left in the storage shed (and which I had consequently removed and added to the rubbish pile). The square posts on the headboard were the perfect size to fit between the two joists! Now, it has to be asked: How many houses can say they're stitched together with bedposts as joist fillers?! LOL

 In the picture above, you can see the 4'x8' hole in the floor after the floorboards were removed. And right there in the middle is the scabwork that's utilizing the bedposts as fillers! Notice under the upper wall (bedroom wall) the 1x4 used to fill in that space.

A closeup of the bedposts! It's funny how they ended up being the exact size we needed! One of the broke when being removed from the bed, or they would be two complete bedposts between the joists!

Once the joist scabs were set in place, we decided to go ahead and move the 16 foot 6x6 beam under the house and get it set up in position. I'd bought this beam last month in order to stabilize the kitchen, which tends to be shaky. The plan was to hoist it into place onto two support jacks that themselves would be supported by two concrete pavers. It didn't quite go as planned, of course! To begin with, my friend was under the house, after we'd dragged the two pavers under and got them into position; my job was to maneuver around the beam (which, by the way, is not light!) so that it was aimed directly at the space under the house, then push it far enough under for him to be able to grab it and help move it. A great deal of shoving on my part, and pulling and shifting on his, got it under the house. But that was only the beginning! Then I had to get under the house as well, and we then had to shift this huge piece of wood (I swear the thing must weight around 150 pounds) while on our hands and knees!

As if the position we were in wasn't enough of a hindrance in moving this beam around, it appears the former owners used to rake their leaves under the house, or maybe the leaves blew in on their own - in any case, there's a good 4"-5" layer of leaves under the house, which made shifting the beam around even more interesting. Of course, the leaf layer was only the beginning - the former owners evidently also used the space under the house as a garbage dump. All kinds of things were under there, broken bottles, old jugs and jars, flower pots, toys, an old storm door (possibly the one that used to be on the back door before the laundry room was built), and some old fencing wire (which I need to dig out tomorrow to see if I can build a dog pen out of it for when I get a dog).  After all that shifting and maneuvering, we then discovered the support jacks I bought are too tall. Oy vey. So now, probably right after I finish this blog, I need to find the receipt for them and take them back to Marvin's. Hopefully they'll have the shorter ones we need. If not, guess it'll be Home Depot or Lowes!

So once we realized that wasn't going to be done today, we abandoned all hope of getting the beam in place for the time being and concentrated on getting the plywood down. Well, we managed to get it down, but had problems wedging it into place. We tried different things, but then decided that it's probably best not to completely wedge it into place just yet, since the easiest way to get under the kitchen is through that area the plywood is covering. So currently, it's sitting in the floor, mostly flush, with just one end above the floor (unlike before, where all of it was just sitting atop the floor). Plus, now all the various holes covered with smallish pieces of wood are covered as well. Those we covered with good pieces of the floorboards we removed, to ensure they'd be the same size. Clever, eh? :)

Tomorrow, my assignments are to clean the kitchen, bedroom, and laundry room to facilitate ease in renovating these areas (lol), return the jacks to Marvin's (still have to find that receipt), replace the jacks with shorter ones, price plywood at Marvin's and Home Depot for a) the possibility of covering my bedroom floor with it for an extra layer of protection from the cold before the carpet is laid down, and b) the possibility of making plywood planks for a plank floor for the kitchen (if I decide to go that route instead of tile).

And thus ends another day in the life of a Hattiesburg Renovator!