Renovation of rotted floor, kitchen

renovation of rotted floor in doorway

rotted plywood floor

painted plywood floor

The renovation train is back on the track here at Shore Side Farm House. It has been derailed for way too long, a depressing overwhelming time. The other project is over and now our current residence can be renovated to come closer to meeting our needs.

Depressing and overwhelming is the description I use because living here at Shore Side Farm House we are currently living in the previous century.  When you are used to a modern life of conveniences, living a century behind is a painful endeavor. Things like no electrical plug in the bathroom (or most other places they are needed), lack of closets in the house, spongy floors, and drafts are all a painful experience when trying to live a modern life with modern expectations. It gets old fast. The magnificent view, and natural surroundings go just so far in fulfilling the needs of a smooth peaceful contemporary life. Unfortunately I have some physical limitations and those limitations test my patience with such inconveniences. Hence, renovation is the word and work of the day.

tear flooring, must be patched before
new flooring can be installed

Today's project started several years ago...hell it probably started 140 years ago when the house was built, but our burden started about three years ago. When we bought the house the kitchen has a miserable 1970 worn out vinyl floor. It still has that miserable floor. The pattern is faded, spots are worn through, and other spots have no vinyl left on them because the floor was installed so poorly that the seam in the middle has raised up and portions of it have chipped off. Essentially we have big cracks in our floor with curling flooring causing a dangerous situation that often causes people to trip when in the kitchen. It makes for a miserable kitchen experience. Misery is caused by the inability to make the floor attractive, inability to make it look clean, and the unsafe walking situation in the room. It is painful just to be in there, without even trying to work there.

third floor: rotted plywood 

The other problem with the floor is physical. The visuals above are painful enough, but when Mr went to install a new laminate floor over the current floor he discovered that the existing floor had rotten joists in addition to ratty vinyl flooring. What does that mean? It meant that new flooring had nothing to be attached to. Even though we intended to put on a floating floor, there were sections of the floor edge that had rotted away and had to be replaced before the floating floor could be put down. This is the portion of the kitchen renovation that is being done today. Continuation of the floor joint replacement is today's project.  The rotted floor was directly related to the poor water control at the doorway. The damage to that was repaired last winter and is covered in other blog entries of this blog. Here are some links to those entries http://shoresidefarmhouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/replacing-rotted-floor-joists-repairing.html  http://shoresidefarmhouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/renovations-on-door.html

original rough sawn floor board

It now must be continued to the interiors of the same spaces covered in the entries above. Yesterday I mentioned to Mr that while standing at the door my toes dropped down through the floor. I guess that brought the whole situation to consciousness, and he started the repair project today. Here are some photos of what is happening, though unfortunately he started the work without having me photograph it first. These are the photos after the boards..a subfloor board, a rough sawn floor board, and the 1970s plywood.... were removed to repair the area. The previous owners of this house chose to cover the problem, rather than fix it. Needless to say this made a bad situation worse. You can see from the condition of the rot from outside to the inside of the house, that the problem had existed a long time.