No Water No Floor

After returning from vacation, we had a few days at home and then went up to Payson on Friday.  I drove separately with Zena (our dog) as I would be spending all week at the house keeping tabs on the plumbing work.  Mike came up a few hours later after putting in a couple hours of work. 

One of our main goals this weekend was to pull up the subfloor in the kitchen.  When we bought the house, we knew that something was different with the kitchen floor as it was about 1/2 inch higher than the flooring in the rest of the house.  After pulling up the tile before our vacation, we found a fairly new plywood floor but the view from the crawlspace did not show new flooring.  It appears that someone put new flooring over the old rotted flooring.  We also found a hole in the floor next to the back door and discovered that water was coming in under the threshold.  Our neighbors had told us that the previous two owners both had flood damage.  We decided we better replace the kitchen floor before it ended up caving in on us.

View of newer plywood on old flooring going into kitchen

Hole and separation near door corner

We knew that Craig and Dennis had just recently started the plumbing work, but I did not find out until I arrived on Friday that they had turned off our water while they were running the new pipes.  After a panicked call to Craig, he made a run to Home Depot to get some parts to setup a temporary faucet in the kitchen that we could use to fill buckets to use for flushing the toilet and washing up.  This definitely made our stay at the house even more primitive than it had been and a step closer to camping out.

Faucet and bucket in kitchen

After Mike arrived, we started the task of uncsrewing and removing the newer layer of plywood.  This task was not too tough, though some of the screws were stripped and we couldn't get them out so we had to use the prybar to pull up the wood.  After seeing the old flooring underneath, we were very thankful we made the decision to put in this extra work.  It was a mess.  The original floor was a layer of plywood over a layer of insulated sheathing material (like thick cardboard with a material coating).  Most of this came up very easily.  While we were pulling it up, we had to walk on the joists where the flooring no longer existed.  One time Mike stepped on the sheathing, mistaking it for a solid board, and fell through.  Luckily he fell on one of the crossbeams and not all the way through to the ground, but that fall, combined with his already bruised rib from our vacation, made him a very sore person.

All flooring gone and using plywood for walkways

Area where Mike fell through and caught one of those cross beams

After getting all the flooring up on Saturday, we were very hot, sweaty and dirty with no way to shower.  It was late in the afternoon and we decided to see if we could find someplace to take a shower.  Matt and I had paid for a two week membership at one of the local gyms in July, but that was a bit expensive for a one time shower.  We decided to check prices at the Tonto Apache Gym that is near the Mazatzal Casino and they said we could shower there for $5, but they were closing in 45 minutes.  It only took us 10 minutes to get there and they ended up letting us shower for free.  It was a very nice facility with a pool and since I would be staying up in Payson for a couple of weeks, I thought I might join, at least for the shower facilities.

Stats:  2 Home Depot trips; 3 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 8/20-8/22: $3,053
Remodeling expense to date: $16,068