Saturday, December 15th, 2007
Well, it’s time to prepare the kitchen subfloor for the tile that’s going to be going on top of it.
Some people have told me, “Hey, just lay the tile on top of the plywood…it’ll be fine.” I was always a little uneasy about that, so I read up on it. Apparently, it’s not a good idea to adhere tile right to plywood, because wood shrinks and expands with temperature and humidity. I guess you can do this in your house if you feel like doing the whole job over in a few years.
The way I like tile done in our house is to prep the subfloor, put thin-set over the subfloor, lay down cement board over the thinset and nail/screw the cement board down. Now, put your tile down. The cement board is what you want to adhere your tile to, not the subfloor.
So last night I started prepping the subfloor for the tile. The first thing I did was to head down to the basement. As you may know, there are several joints in the subfloor. Many of them travel with the floor joists, so they aren’t a big concern. We’ll call those “vertical” joints or seams. Then, there are other joints…we’ll call them “horizontal” joints. These seams travel across the floor joists and have nothing holding them from flexing. Well, I suppose they are tongue and groove, but from what I can see, they still flex when I stand on them. I good way to see if they flex is to walk around with bare feet. You can feel around better.
You can see the seams in the photo above.
When I went downstairs, I pulled out my nice new DeWalt miter saw and grabbed some spare 2″x4″s. My plan was to cut the 2″x4″s and screw them up against the bottom of the subfloor (screws into the existing joists). There was insulation in the way, so I tried to be very careful…I had just gotten out of the shower. Well, everything was going fine. I was cutting and screwing and cutting and screwing. Then, I started noticing some itching on my arms. Man!!! The insulation got to me. Oh well, there’s another shower.
Anyway, the purpose of those 2″x4″s is to stop the flex from those horizontal seams. I went upstairs and I succeeded in my mission. I walked around bare-footed and everything was good and solid. Now, I had something to screw into to finish off that job.
Also, when preparing a subfloor for tile, you want to be sure to re-screw the subfloor to the joists. Things are bound to come loose and start squeaking over time. If you walk around, you may even notice some play between the subfloor and the joists. Some hopping might help you notice this. This is the reason I went out and bought my new chalk snapper.
Luckily, in my case, the previous owners put down some really cheap parquet flooring. They came in 1′x1′ squares with foam attached to the bottoms. On the foam, there was adhesive. This adhesive left me with little glue spots all over the floor. Now, I don’t only have to sand the floor smooth, I also have to sand up the glue spots, which like to get sticky when hot (from the friction of the sander). We’ll see how that goes.
After the floor is all sanded, I am going to re-screw the subfloor to the joists and sweep up. The floor will be ready to tile and my job is done.
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Thursday, April 26th, 2007
Well, well, well. I think we’re going to do it. All that’s left with the house is to re-do the bathroom, kitchen and the back porch. Yeah, just the bathroom, kitchen and back porch….ya know, those cheap and easy projects.
We are going tackle the back porch first. The one we have is in pretty bad shape. It’s made with that Trex stuff…only, I don’t think it is Trex. It may be some knockoff, who knows. All I know is it’s gray and very washed out looking. Also, the porch may be a little crooked, which drives me absolutely mad. The railings are hanging on by a thread due to poor workmanship and the top of the porch collects water. The whole thing just looks really bad. Are those enough reason to get this thing done? (Oh yeah, the bugs out here are TERRIBLE! The current porch is pretty useless as is.)
As you may already know, I made our front porch. I am a pretty handy fella, but I just don’t want to do this one. The first reason is that this one will be screened in…meaning there will be a roof. I am really not in the mood to attempt to build that by myself. Also, I want it done quickly, so no messing around. It would take me about two years to get home all the lumber strapped to the top of my car again. I like to do projects little by little.
I am going to use a contractor that is a friend of my neighbor. He seems like he would do a good job of coming in a putting this thing up quickly. The porch will be 16′ out the back of the house and 20′ wide. There will be 6 sonotube footings, 12″ wide. There will be 2 main girders holding up 2×10″ joists. Everything will be pressure treated. For the floor, he will put down 6×1 5/8″ boards with a 4×4″ every 4′ to hold up the roof. The main beam holding up the roof will be a 4×6″. The roof will have to be built into the current roof, which is the tricky part…to me. I am sure it will take no time for these guys. Also, they are going to put in a set of 4′wide stairs about 4′ out from the house. Currently, the stairs are slapped right up against the house and very loose.
I asked that they don’t complete the railings and the screening. I want to do them. Those are things that I can take my time on. Also, I am going to tear down the current deck. My neighbor, Tim wants to burn it. I have to keep him away because it is pressure treated and I can use the wood for another project. Tim is disappointed, but still willing to help me.
I picked up the building permit from the buidling inspector yesterday morning and have to fill it in and drop it off so the contractor can draw his diagram.
Now, of course, you are going to see lots of pictures of this. I hope you are as excited as we are!
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Tuesday, September 5th, 2006
One of the first things I noticed while looking at this house when we were “In the market” was the lousy shape of the basement. I heard that there was a little moisture on the floor (of which I will discuss the remedy to later), was informed by the home inspector that the insulation fitted in between the floor (upstairs) joists was installed up side down (which I already fixed) and some of the mortar joints needed to be finished. But one thing that really stood out to me was noticed when I was upstairs. In the living room and along the hallway that runs the length of the house, there seemed to be a slight dip. Now, this really annoys me, not because I am a little on the anal side when it comes to this stuff, but because when I was renting an apartment a few years back, I actually had to use a rope tied from my rolling chair to the corner leg of my desk to stop the chair from rolling to the center of the room when I was sitting on it. That is how crooked the floor was. After a year of that, you can understand why I was so angered by this little dip. I had to find out what was causing this.
I went downstairs and inspected the entire foundation. No cracks. It looked fine. I went to Home Depot and bought one of those laser line tools. I mounted the laser light on one side of the girder beam and ran it down the entire length…AH HA! The center of the beam towards the middle of the house was about an inch lower than the ends at the foundation. Looks like the original lally columns and footings settled a bit over time. Well, looks like I found my first project.
I was also a little concerned about the cement block column (all the way to the left of the picture above). It was installed on a tilt. So that, along with two settled lally column footings, gave me a sense of urgency. I was in the mood for a challenge anyway. I decided to put in three additional footings and columns, this time to maximum code compliance. I would put one column in between each of the existing columns.
I dug the first hole closest to the foundation wall. I dug it about one and a half feet deep. Then, I constructed a form from cut 2″x10″s so it would create a footing of two feet wide by one foot high. Then, I hung a plum line from the girder beam just to make sure the form was exactly centered under the beam. I measured this about 10 times. I also made sure the form was perfectly level.
Once again, I measured the actual form to make sure I cut everything correctly. I kept thinking that one day the building inspector was going to show up with a micrometer and inspect everything I did. I actually called the building department and they told me that this did not need to be inspected since I was adding in between the existing footings, and they met compliance back when the house was built.
Building code calls for the footing to be one foot deep by two feet wide. Since I made a form from 2″x10″s, I needed to keep it about 2-3 inches off the ground. I accomplished this by propping the form up on some rocks that I dug up. Then, I measured to make sure I was perfect (again). You really need to do this a lot, it keeps shifting.
When everything was absolutely perfect, I mixed a few bags of Quikrete Concrete Mix in my wheelbarrow. The form took a total of 7 bags. I smoothed it out real nice.
I waited a day for it to set and then popped off the form.
Now that is what I call footing. Let that sucker try to settle. One thing that I forgot to mention was that I sprayed water from my hose into the empty hole before I put the form in, then I let it dry. That let made sure the dirt was nice and compact. I also put in a few pieces of rebar for added strength. You don’t need to do that for a footing this small, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
The cement calls for a cure time of 7 days for a 2500psi compressive strength and a 28 cure time for the full 4000psi compressive strength. I have heard that concrete never stops curing. You also need to make sure the concrete stays moist to cure correctly. I am sure we all have seen a sidewalk that hasn’t cured properly…chipping and flaking to expose the gravel. To follow the instructions, I filled in around the footing, wet the top of it and layed some plastic over it. I wet the top every day for 7 days.
I followed these same exact steps for the next two footings. The following photo is of the final completed footing.
For the last column, I decided to try my hand at building a cement block wall. There was room and how else is a new homeowner supposed to get experience? Those temporary columns on the right came out of there after I was done…they stayed on hold for a future project.
Believe it or not, this wall is perfectly level in every direction. I filled the last two blocks in solid because that is where I put the weight of the girder beam.
After all the concrete in the footings was cured properly, I went to a local lumberyard, purchased three lally columns and had them cut to my measurements. These are the familiar maroon ones filled with concrete. I am not sure of the weight each one can support, but I have a feeling it is more than enough. I then purchased a 20 ton bottle jack and jacked up the area next to each existing column. When there was enough clearance from the plate on the top of the each column and the bottom of the girder beam, I slid in a quarter inch thick 6″x6″ square steel plate. I did this for each existing column as a spacer. I read somewhere that you should only jack up a house one eighth of an inch per day so the sheetrock upstairs won’t crack. I did a quarter inch per day because I was going to tackle the upstairs sheetrock later anyway. After about a week, and enough spacers to make the girder beam perfectly straight, as indicated by my laser, I jacked up the girder beam and put in each new lally column on each new footing. Each one had a great tight fit.
If you are planning a project like this, I really suggest you have a professional do it. You can get quite freaked out by all the squeaking that the wood does when it is jacked up.
In the photo below, you can see all of the lally columns in a row…the originals and the new ones. What a project! No more dip in the floor upstairs…nice and level. Just wait until I am done digging out the entire basement. Almost there…
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