the saga continues...
coming back after the weekend, i had some time to mull this bathroom around in my head. think about how i want to tackle things. mainly how to tie in new structure and how.
but for now, started with cleaning up the joist cavity so we could start removing everything. theres a lot going on in the joist cavities... radiant heat pipes, old capped off abs drains, really crummy electrical, all the reflective crap for the radiant heat, copper to pex back to copper water lines.
cleaned everything out, then started dropping the ceiling in the bathroom below. then started taking joists out. which was far easier than expected.
once we had the joists out, our attention turned to how to tie back in. Marc (boss) and i, after a long talk and a lot of investigating of the old structure, decided a new LVL beam would be the best way to build the new floor. the new joists would be sitting on the exterior block wall on one side and hangered off our new lvl beam on the other. so, we started investigating how and where we would put a post to hold up the one side of this new lvl. the other side would be on another exterior block wall...
this led us to questioning the raised floors in the basement. how were they constructed, are they poured concrete, how thick, whats under, etc.
so, lots of demo. took out the steps to the bathroom and the adjacent storage area in the basement. discovered both raised areas are formed and poured concrete. about 4" thick, sitting on dirt... also discovered the entire lower floor is also sitting on dirt... they constructed a 2x4 wall, laid it on the dirt, and plywooded on top......... the lumber is just sitting on the dirt.... sitting on the god damned dirt....
half of the 2x4 platform floor is completely rotten. how this entire house is not completely infested with termites i have no idea... now, i dont even know whats going to happen with the entire rest of the basement.. on the lower floor there is a landing, office, bedroom, and three closets... quite a bit of square footage potentially just sitting on dirt. completely deplorable...
anyways, were ignoring that for now. we have to press on with the post and beam.
the plan for now is to break open the side wall of the raised concrete floor, undermine the corner, form and pour a footing, then break open the top of the slab and install the post, then we can put the beam up and get a floor in the upper bathroom.
because this house falls apart each time we work on it, we have to complete the upper bathroom in two weeks, then move onto another job of smashing concrete and pouring new footings so we can move around some steel posts for a steel beam in a basement we're starting. $100,000 basement job. big house. all engineered drawings. have to call a welder in to weld the new posts and a 4x4 x 1/4" steel box tube under the existing beam so we can move the posts out of the way. then i will be able to go back and continue working on this debacle at hillcroft...
i honestly cannot imagine the thought process of the people who do this kind of work. or how they go home and sleep at night...
the shear amount of work that went into forming and pouring these raised slabs, instead of just modifying the plumbing drains is incomprehensible. the house was built back sometime in the 20's i think. cast iron drains to the street, and low basements. so the drains are quite high. much too high to put a functioning bathroom..... they raised the bathroom floor to the height of the cast drains. and in the process realized they didnt have adequate headroom, so they notched out the floor joists above to give more headroom. all the meanwhile, completely ruining this house.... guh...
