Mmmmm....Floor blog

Ok, so here's the story. This is all my mother's fault. What isn't?

I was down in Florida, having a nice, relaxing stay at the rent's place (complete with pool, poolboy (Dad), and sandwich maker (Mom), when my mother attempted to engage me in conversation. Mind you, I was attempting to nap by the pool, leaving her to watch two small children by herself, so I was quite irritated. She started out by asking me about things we were planning to do with our house.

I mentioned a few things, including our bathroom floor which has become increasingly discolored since we moved in. I told her I hated it, plus the vinyl was coming up by the tub.

Cautionary glee filled my mother's eyes. "Oh, Jamee, you need to do something about that. The water is probably getting under the vinyl and rotting the floor."

Relaxation slips away.

"So you are saying my house is going to fall down?"
"No," she replied. " I am not saying your house will fall down. But the tub might fall through the floor."
"So you are saying my house is going to fall down?"
" I am not saying your house will fall down. But the tub might fall through the floor."

I saw no difference.

The conversation went on like that for the next hour. Meanwhile, I had images of Michael taking a shower and his naked, flailing body crashing through to the first floor. Right into his DVDs. I would never hear the end of it.

So I called Michael, warned him about his imminent death and told him that the next weekend we were going to work on the floor. I picked out a tile and read up everything I could on the subject.

So that was our major project this weekend. Michael did most of it and I am totally proud of him. First off, he removed the old vinyl, revealing this below.




Ugh. The darker patches are mildew. Fortunately, that is a plywood underlayment with additional vinyl underneath. I finished scraping off the old vinyl and cleaned the plywood with a bleach solution, leaving the floor to look like this:



Much better, eh? What's left is just a waterstain. The wood was pretty sound all around. We left that to dry overnight, applied a leveler and a primer and then Michael went about laying the tile.




He did a pretty damn good job, don't you think? The toliet was hard to get around but we solved that by lining it with some flexible caulk. This caulk is also now protecting the side of the tub to prevent any future damage.

So that is how we spent Memorial Day weekend.