Journey to the Subfloor

The half-bathroom on the the ground floor was our challenge yesterday. We took a long journey to the subfloor, and we gathered all the supplies we'd need to lay our tile.

Let's start by looking back at the half-bathroom on Friday. That reddish/brownish/uglyish tile is the same as in the kitchen. When we started digging beneath it, we found a few fun surprises.

First of all, we had to dig under a 1/8 inch sheet of plywood. Then we found old linoleum.


Below that? Another set of linoleum tile. Then another sheet of plywood. Then? What appears to be the original linoleum. Here're all the different tiles. Notice there's one tile-style in the upper right of the frame.


As with the rest of the house, it seems like whoever fixed it up did half the job. Instead of removing the old and replacing with new, they simply slapped the new right on top of the old.

It wouldn't have been such a problem, but "the old" that was underneath had incurred significant water damage.


All the plywood should be wood-colored. Yikes. Probably at some point the small radiator in the room overflowed, or maybe the toilet leaked. Not sure, but old mold and a musty smell accompanied us on our journey.

We did get to the subfloor though, which was a major accomplishment. It's very sturdy, comprised of: joists with 14" gaps plus perpendicular 1-1/2 inch board, then another layer of perpendicular 1-1/2 inch board.

We had to pull out lots of nails. Many were rusted from the water damage.


On top of that, we're going to lay Hardibacker cement board, mortar, our tiles, grout, and sealant.

Continued in the next post...