Rotted Floor board. Not that bad!

This weekend I continued on with the removal of the plaster from the floor of the living room. While tackling one of the last corners of the room, I pulled up a carpet tack strip and noticed that I could see sunlight streaming from under the floor. Ugh. Not a good sign at all.

Probing further with the crowbar I jabbed at the edge of the floor coverings, peeling back the layers only to reveal that there is indeed a gap between the wall and the floor. The floor gives way as I put the crowbar through to the basement. Flip me. Now I'm really starting to freak out, because this could mean a lot of significant damage to the original floors. The same floors I was just really hopeful about getting spared because of all the covering layers.

Since the living room is still covered with lath, plaster and multiple layers there is no way I can see the extent of the damage from above. So I go right to the basement to check everything out from below. Let it be known that at 26 I'm still more than a little freaked out by basements. So I rarely go down into either of ours. Once in the basement it is not that hard to spot the damage. Right in the corner, by one of our basement windows (hence the sunlight that I could see) is a plank of wood that is completely rotted away and I can see right up into the living room.

However there is also some really good news, because from underneath I can not see another plank with that level of rot. In fact, the rest of the floor looks awesome from the underside! Gives me back the hope that we really will be able to refurbish the original floors eventually.

Cross your fingers for us! But please don't hold your breath, refinishing the floors will be one of the last things we're going to do in the house.

Hope for the original floors!

When we bought the Wee house the living rooms had the worst flooring in the whole house by far. I've mentioned the condition of the carpets in previous posts but to quickly recap they were dog pee soaked and extremely worn. The first thing we did after buying was rip the carpets and (what was left of) the padding up. Bet you didn't know that padding could essentially disintegrate? Well padding can wear away over time and it can also merge itself to be one with the carpet backing.




There were two big reasons we got the carpet up ASAP. The main reason was the smell. It was the kind of smell that makes you not want to breathe and had made permanent home in the carpet. No amount of airing out the house was going to get rid of it. Second reason was the floor underneath. You can see from the basement that the house has the original random width pine flooring. We were afraid of the damage that could have been cause by the wet carpets and wanted to get them off the wood immediately.


The thing about renovating an old house that rings true for everyone and every project is that one never knows what surprises they'll find out after uncovering things. Our carpets were no exception.


Sitting under the carpet on one side of the room was a layer of vinyl tiles that can only be described as the same ones my elementary school bathroom had. Head scratchingly odd right? Underneath those tiles there is a layer of a thin floor leveling type sheet. I only know this because I peeled away the soggy tile to see if they were attached to the floor or not.


We think these are the same tiles, except in our attic landing area. You can see the dry version of the under layer here, which hopefully has helped to save our floors from all the moisture.

On the other side of the room the carpet removal revealed an extra top layer of floor leveling stuff. Except it is not installed well and has high bumps all over it, so the floor moves around as you walk. Fun times.

Since tearing out the room lead to reclaiming the original shape I was able to see a tiny bit of the real floor that missed all the layers because of a beam that was placed there. Which lead to the discovery that there is a layer of 1/2" plywood down underneath the tiles and thin layer. The arrow is pointing towards the end of the plywood and you can see a tiny smudge mark where I tried to see the actual floor. Quick little spit shine.

Another layer of flooring! I was afraid that the wee had leaked below the under layment to the real floor because in some of the areas the tiles are still soaked and peeling up. I guess that means the underfloor does a good job of keeping moisture on the surface and not below it, but you never know. Left arrow is pointing out tiles I've accidentally scraped up, right arrow is showing a still damp area, despite having moisture sucking plaster dust on top of it for months...

The best part of all these layer of flooring? The act as the best shield between my plaster shoveling and the real floor that I could ever ask for. I don't have to worry at all as I scrape my shovel along the bottom scooping up dust. If we didn't have this protection I can tell you the job of removing all the plaster from this room would 10 times harder. I'd be a total freak about not messing up the floors!