Different type of DIY post today, because today I finally decided that I have to put my kitchen floor back in. The shower I installed is directly under the 1st floors kitchen. All of the pipework I had to do to get cold/hot water to the shower also goes to the kitchen.  The drain line will be routed around the back of the shower and once complete, I’ll have not only a kitchen floor, I’ll have the beginnings of “utilities”.  Electrical wiring is mostly up at this point, but nothing is tied in until rough inspections come around.

The kitchen floor is mostly removed and you can see my shower down and to the left. There is lighting installed above, 5 recessed lamps, enough receptacles to meet code though they need their wiring cleaned up.

I wanted to make sure I would get enough flooring to both raise and level the floor the 2″ that it’s off from edge to edge, which we made better? by leveling portions of the house. Overall, the leveling helped out and the extra support is nice to have. Anyway, boards have to be laid east/west since rafters run north/south, going to use some decent T&G stuff, which we already used in the bathroom and that was lovely to use. One note, only need 4 sheets since I have enough material left over from the bathroom to finish this up.

Two important things of note here. 1) Drainline from the 2nd floor bathroom runs through this wall. It’s no longer the cast iron pipe that used to hold the house up (joking), but if you look at the lower left, you’ll notice that the framing sticks out a little. The ones to the right (on the left wall) also have shims on the front. Those are being taken out, the beams are fine without them. I will have to bump out the 3 other studs to the left of the 2nd floor drain however, to make a level surface. This will give me a soffit somewhere, which I’m not sure I want, since I’ll then have to have another couple soffits.

Oh, you don’t know what a soffit is? I didn’t either when I was having our break room constructed at work and all they kept talking about were these damn soffits. I stopped the meeting and jumped in, “What’s a soffit?” You’d swear I’d run over their damn dogs. A couple drawings later, I found out its just something that sticks out and serves no real purpose other than to look pretty. Here’s a picture of a soffit for reference:

See that curved piece of sheetrock at the top of this machine guarding computer desk? That’s a soffit. That’s also a computer desk that was installed at my place of work.

One side of the room is water leveled to 63-3/4 and the other side (above) is 65-7/8. Not great.  A couple of the floor joists need to be taller and since I am completely removing the floor, I have two options: accept the floor slopes to one side of the room, or sister in new joists. I’m going to sister in some additional joists and give the floor that 2″ it needs to be level.

Oh, water levels, awesome inventions. They allow you to find a common mark across every stud. Measure down to one of these bad boys:

The floor joist being referenced is to the 1 o’clock of the trash bag box, where I tore up a couple floor boards to expose the basement.

and you know how much height needs to be added to one end of the room.  My marks are the black marks for the floor, my father used red marks to level the ceiling, which I can take pictures of next time I stop by the house.  But first, trash day is Wednesday and I have a small problem that you may have noticed from the shower install: I have a trash pile of wood, doors and boxes of crappy old books that need to be thrown out. I’ve already cleaned this corner out twice, and this will be my third…