Bathroom and study floorboard renovation

[RogerS]

When we moved into our house 20 years ago, the first bathroom that we did was done on a bit of a budget. It's an old house - the part I'm working in is about 300 years old or so. A rural property that was part of a farm means that bodging was the order of the day. Over the years the building has sagged especially the floor in the bathroom.

To get round this, at some time in the past 50 years or so, the owner built up from the old original floor and laid more floorboards on top of the original boards but these have also suffered the ravages of time and have shrunk in width and parts are held together by the woodworm holding hands.

My builder bodged the fitting of the wash-basin and WC and over time the wall has moved, cracked and basically looked unsound. So over supper one night SWMBO said 'As we've got the plasterer coming in downstairs, why don't we redo that wall? And it would be nice to replace those old floorboards with new oak to match in with the rest of upstairs. And I'd like to fit a shower to one end of the bath. And if we're doing that then we ought to extend the oak through to my study'.

In retrospect, the wall was the easy part even though it took two days to rip out all the old grotty stuff, go back to the original brickwork - I did say that this part was timbered, didn't I? - and then make good with many layers of plasterboard and ply for the washbasin and WC to be fixed securely.

So now I am starting to do the flooring.

Plan A - was to remove the second lot of flooring and simply relay the new stuff down onto the old original boards. Thank God for the Fein. I was able to cut the boards flush with the wall all the way round.

Having removed the floorboards, this is what I'm faced with.

What doesn't come across is that the far corner on the right sags by 1". Those original boards are 19" wide - I think that they were called coffin boards - Thank god, it's not listed. You can just about see where they packed it up.

Running a level from the oak lipping to the back wall also reveals that the floor sags from front to back by about 4".

And yes, that is the mains water pipe you can see. The thought of trying to pack out the underside of the new flooring is now a no-no.

Plan B.

Remove a large chunk of the original coffin boards. There is an old oak beam roughly where the extension reel is. Two smaller oak beams at the right hand end of the water pipe and fortunately another beam underneath the packing on the right.

Then take some 4x2 or similar and coach bolt it to the oak beams to give me a level-ish set of bearers. Judiciously drop the floor level as it goes into the bathroom as I don't want to have to mess around with that soil pipe.

Re-lay new oak flooring onto new bearers. Assume that the study will go the same way. That's the theory.

Questions -

1) Is there a better way?

2) I don't have a secret nailer. The bathroom is very small, as you can see. The study is not much larger. My oak boards are 180mmwide so it won't take me long to reach the wall where the nailer can't be used. So it seems a bit of a hassle to buy or hire one for just a few boards. I'm reluctant to use screw-and-plug and was thinking about gluing to the bearers. Good idea or duff?

Roger

 

[Jake]

1. If you've got a guide-rail saw, and the joists are relatively straight, its easier to go over the top of the joists with a wedge-shaped bit. I don't normally bother straightening up floors (character, isn't it), but 4" is a bit of a drop in a small room!

2. Tongue-tites maybe?

 

[OLD]

Perhaps level the supporting timbers then ply wood over.The final finishing timbers to be screwed and plugged or nailed and filled adj. the wall then secret nail and hand punched picking up the support timbers were possible.A isolating layer between floor and ply may be required.

 

[Mcluma]

I don't normally bother straightening up floors (character, isn't it), but 4" is a bit of a drop in a small room!

 

[Jake]

I don't normally bother straightening up floors (character, isn't it), but 4" is a bit of a drop in a small room!

Why are you crying?

 

[RogerS]

Thanks, Jake, I'd not heard of those screws. They sound ideal. Not sure what you mean by a wedge-shaped bit, though.

Old - I dismissed a ply under-surface but I'll revisit it.

 

[Jake]

If you ply skin, then a glue-down floor is possible

 

[jasonB]

Just put in a floor drain, tank it and call it a wet room, you already have the fall :wink:

I've done a shower room in an old cottage with 165mm fall over 3.0m.

I would take up the old wide boards and then form a level base with either furrings (long tapered strips) ontop of the beams or fix new joists to the sides of the old beams.

As for fixing the flooring, just use floorboard cramps or even folding wedges to get the boards tight then pilot drill diagonally through the tongue and nail by hand, punching the head below the surface.

Jason

 

[RogerS]

Wet room...don't you dare tell SWMBO! She is now out of her study temporarily because the floorboards might as well be replaced there as the same time.

In the study, initial investigation shows that the ch pipes will run right underneath the new floorboards. The pipes do have some pipe insulation (which has been squashed flat slightly by the old floorboards which shows how tight it is.) Now on the landing the oak floorboard that runs directly over (an unlagged IIRC) heating pipes has shrunk dramatically in width to the point where the tongue is almost out of the groove. I don't want this to happen in the study if I can help it. So insulation.

I was wondering if wrapping a space blanket around the pipes would help?

 

[RogerS]

OK - update time.

Removing the two layers of old floorboards revealed a number of joists of differing shapes, sizes and levels.

The objective is to re-establish the new oak flooring level in the two rooms so that I don't have to faff around too much with the soilpipe here

What to do. Best advice and what I've done before is to use firrings. The trouble is that none of the joists are square which means that if you simply bolt the firring to the beam then it takes the level out of whack as the firring twists. Indeed one of the joists is round !

Neither are the joists straight. Which means that you need to fix lots of shorter
length firrings to follow the line of the joist. Which means more bolts to be drilled and screwed.

And neither are the tops of the joists flat.

Which means that every firring and every joist has to be tweaked individually.

So next step is to establish a reference level for the firrings. Because the old floorboards dropped away from the threshold in the picture above, I reduce the threshold level as much as I can. Plumbing restricts just how far I can go.

That stripey object under the plastic sheet is my wife's comfy chair, We got it into the study somehow but failed miserably to find a way to get it back out. As you see it, it made it to the bathroom floor but I can see it going up and on top of the bath.

To get an idea of the level and whether or not I will hit the soilpipe connection criteria, I use screws.

All over. I take a level from the threshold and as far as I can into the study and establish a reference screw there. I then take levels off in all directions from that 'master screw'.

I also needed to check that the level will slip underneath the stud partition.

And as you can see this stud partition floats on nothing at the moment.

The joys of an old property.

Oh yes...dust everywhere.

 

[billybuntus]

I've done a similar job int our bedroom but it wasn't even close to being as hideously bodged as that floor, you have my sympathy.

 

[Oryxdesign]

It's hard to see from the photos but could you coachbolt level joists to the existing joists? Doesn't matter about them not being square so much. They wouldn't need to be very big say 3" or 4" by 2" depending on how much runout you have, it would help stiffen up the floor too. Saves cutting all those furring pieces and you can leave gaps for the pipework.

Simon

 

[RogerS]

oops..sorry my misuse of terms. That's exactly what I'm planning to do.

 

[RogerS]

You'd think I'd been blitzing away with all these pictures. Truth of the matter is that it has taken a very very long time. On reflection, it's worth noting how the project has developed (some would say has gone downhill).

Originally I thought that I could lay the new floorboards down directly on top of the existing floor. That's when I told LOML that she'd be out of her study for three days. Mistake No.1.

Then once I started I discovered that the floor was not only not level but sagged in the middle of each room (and explains why SWMBO's filing cabinet drawers would never stay shut). So Plan B was to lift up the most recent layer and lay the new stuff down on the 300 year old elm. Quite how I'd finesse my way through the lack of joists near where the stud partition was located had yet to be worked out. Nevertheless I painstakingly Feine'd my way around the stud partition cutting out layer one flush with the partition.

Having used three Fein blades and removed layer one, it became obvious that trying to lay T&G floorboards onto what was the grottiest surface imaginable was not going to work.

Time for Plan C. Remove the old elm floorboards. Again cutting flush to the stud partition, that used up five more Fein blades. Whilst much of the elm was rotten with woodworm, enough was rock hard to blunt the Fein blades much too quickly. Still no further forward on quite working out how to support the new flooring due to a paucity of joists.

So Plan D. That stud partition isn't holding anything up structurally. The remaining bits of floorboard underneath the partition are pretty loose. Therefore logic says I can remove them. Which I did. As the house didn't fall down, I felt I could proceed.

So here we are. Many many days later. Partition wedged up with something at the right level to support the floorboards on either side of the partition.

All new joists bolted to the old beams. And sort of level.

Since none of the walls are square, this large T-square comes into its' own for working out the angles for the plywood.

And a quick trip out to the workshop and the Festool TS55 and here's the first funny shaped bit of ply.

Getting there. Slowly.

 

[RogerS]

Study all finished. The Tongue-Tite screws are very good. A bit tricky to keep the special bit in line with the screw otherwise you cam out. The nett result is that you then screw into your fingers. After doing this too many times while trying to drive the screws in sans pilot hole, I did start to drill pilot holes and well worth the extra effort. 85% of the screws went in to the correct depth at first go. The other 15% just needed backing out and then driving in a bit firmer. The variable speed driver worked best. Impact driver not a good idea. The 14.4v Makita was very comfortable to use over a long period.

Only slight downside is that the Tongue-Tite screws have a tendency to shift the first board slightly as you tighten them down.

Finished Briwax and SWMBO moved back in. Carpet down so not much to see.

The Fein was a Godsend yet again and so easy to take 1" off the bottom of the door jambs so I could slide the new floorboards underneath.

Bathroom relevelling completed, plywood down (damn glad I went for 18mm rather than 12mm ply) and oak floorboards laid. Aquacoat SP Satin from Smith and Rodger will be the finish as it's nice and moisture resistant and hardly changes the colour of the oak..unlike some other stuff I could mention.

The bad news was that I'd not planned to take the bath out but having realised that one side of the bath would be effectively floating, I had no choice but to remove it. Therein lay the problem. When I fit a bath I never intend it to move. Also the tiles around it were well liked by LOML, no longer made and I wanted to try and keep them intact and so minimise any making good with plaster and filler etc. In hindsight it would have been far simpler just to rip them out as it took me five hours to slowly and painstakingly remove the bath...finding all the screws that I'd used in the fixing-of and removing all the foam etc etc.

Even then the bath refused to come out and it was then that I realised that I'd solidly fixed the bath to the wall with brackets which were....behind the tiles.

So out with the Fein...the diamond blade was too fat to cut the grout so I had to use (waste?) several wood/metal blades to cut down behind the tiles and also in the grout. However the tiles refused to budge. I also stick down tiles like they're never going to come of. Spot the trend?

I knew that if I tried a chisel, screwdriver or bolster chisel down behind the tiles that they would break. Then :idea: I have a slate ripper aka roofing tile ripper. Very flat..very long and just the job for carefully knocking down behind the tiles and the wall. And this time I remembered to put a dust sheet inside the bath. And off they popped ready to go back.

Rerouted the incoming mains. Originally I had mains feeding the WC and decided against this for the refit. But because I didn't have any 22mm > 15mm adaptors and didn't want to waste time going down the plumbers merchants, I used a Speedfit 22mm > 15mm T-piece and blanked off the T.
Finished rerouting the mains and checked to be water-tight. However mulling things over decided that SWMBO might complain about the time it took to fill the WC so I'd better bring up a stub underneath the bath from the mains. Which I did. I picked up from the blocked off T, made nice wee joints, stubby bits of copper, made do with what I had and then I stood back to look at my handiwork.

Yup..that long pipe is the rerouted mains - phase 1. That stub is the new bit. Now why didn't I just put a T piece in the pipe already above the floor?

So what's next? Power shower to go in, SWMBO to redecorate, then refit the bath.