747mopar
Well-Known Member
To give a little hindsight my wife and I built our home and wouldn't you know it I got laid off during the construction leading us to save where we could.... the floor. We had some Red Oak laying around and had it milled into a hardwood floor and I've hated it every since! When the wife pitched the idea of replacing it I was all for it except ripping up the tile too, we compromised on a floor I really liked with the agreement that the tile would go.... Bad idea!!!!!
So where it went wrong... I didn't like the fresh air return so I decided to rework it... Took the huge rectangular grate and cut a circular pattern out of it and whipped up an Oak trim ring.
Next problem was the transition (stairs) from the kitchen to the living room. Since the living room was added after the kitchen the stairs were built to mate to the old floor.... Had to be gutted and reworked.
Then as I'm pulling up the old floor I find the dreaded termite damage!!! Fortunately it's very localized, there's a inaccessible crawl space that has a cold joint in the concrete allowing them to get threw. As it turns out they focused on a piece of dead flooring (dead prior to being sawed) and a joist in the crawl space and nothing else.. That I can find.
The killer was ripping out the tile that I initially refused too do, what a PITA!! Whoever says thinset mortar doesn't stick to wood is full of chit. 2days renting tools to find out that a chisel on our Bosch Hammer drill was the ticked and that's just to get the mortar up after the tile and backer board was already gone!
And then the money...
Our dishwasher recently started leaking... New dishwasher.
In order to remove the huge island I had to bust up the tile countertop... New Granite countertops ordered.
On top of that is rental fees to saw a hole threw the concrete to gain access to the crawl space so it can be monitered, sealed and insulated.
I allowed 2 days for this and am now on day 5 but couldn't be happier with the results even with the setbacks.
So where it went wrong... I didn't like the fresh air return so I decided to rework it... Took the huge rectangular grate and cut a circular pattern out of it and whipped up an Oak trim ring.
Next problem was the transition (stairs) from the kitchen to the living room. Since the living room was added after the kitchen the stairs were built to mate to the old floor.... Had to be gutted and reworked.
Then as I'm pulling up the old floor I find the dreaded termite damage!!! Fortunately it's very localized, there's a inaccessible crawl space that has a cold joint in the concrete allowing them to get threw. As it turns out they focused on a piece of dead flooring (dead prior to being sawed) and a joist in the crawl space and nothing else.. That I can find.
The killer was ripping out the tile that I initially refused too do, what a PITA!! Whoever says thinset mortar doesn't stick to wood is full of chit. 2days renting tools to find out that a chisel on our Bosch Hammer drill was the ticked and that's just to get the mortar up after the tile and backer board was already gone!
And then the money...
Our dishwasher recently started leaking... New dishwasher.
In order to remove the huge island I had to bust up the tile countertop... New Granite countertops ordered.
On top of that is rental fees to saw a hole threw the concrete to gain access to the crawl space so it can be monitered, sealed and insulated.
I allowed 2 days for this and am now on day 5 but couldn't be happier with the results even with the setbacks.
