Whatever would he think of us?
(His name's Bob, by the way, and we would wholeheartedly recommend his services to anyone in the Capital Region who requires the services of a good plumber. Once, of course, we're done with him.)
Of course, now that I think about it, I'm probably getting ahead of myself a little bit. Yes, we have taken up the subfloor, but before we could do that, we had to remove the last vestiges of the Ba'ath Bath. Namely the vanity and the toilet (not, sadly, the Toilet From Hell).
Vanity before...
Vanity gone:
As you can see, we continued removing the drywall, and finished up with a pretty much completely gutted bathroom.
Oh, did I say finished up? Ha! It was at that point that the real fun began, and we started taking up the subfloor. Not only did this particular task require pretty much every saw we own (yay for powertools!), but I FINALLY had an excuse to spend the gift certificate I got from the Top Brass for my birthday.
You see, I had to cut out the plywood subfloor using the circular saw and then pry it off the joist using crowbars and other implements of destruction. While this worked out pretty well, the blade guide on the saw meant I couldn't get close enough to the sill plates of the wall.
We have to "sister" a new joist to the existing one so that it will project out past the sill plate and give us a nailing edge for the new floor. Otherwise, the floor might sag along the edge of the wall, which would be extraordinarily bad if, for example, someone were to install a 400-pound tub right there, and then fill said tub with a few (many) gallons of heavy, heavy water. But the closest I could get to the existing joist was about an inch and a half -- which is exactly the width of the 2x8 we're using to sister the joists.
Now, I could probably have used the reciprocating saw to get most of the extra wood off, but it's not EXACTLY a finesse tool, if you know what I mean. Add to that the fact that there are an awful lot of pipes and wires and other, somewhat important bits of things that run through the wall and sill plates, and I REALLY didn't want to have to redo any of it.
So I hied myself off to the Home Despot, and spent my birthday money on one of these:
It's kind of like an angle grinder with a wood blade on it (along with a recessed attaching nut and a few extra guards and whatnot) and it totally did the trick. Well, along with a lot of sweat, dust, and a helping hand from a chisel here and there.
And then came Bob, to make our crappy old plumbing look all shiny awesome fun!
Befores:
Afters:
Once he was finished, we got busy with the sistering. Here are the new joists in place, with plenty of meat for the new subfloor to rest on.
And then we insulated (in a desperate hope to ensure that people sitting downstairs in the kitchen wouldn't be able to hear any "bathroom noises" anymore):
And then we covered it all up with 3/4" tongue-and-groove sheathing:
Bob came back and pronounced it ... awesome! Or, well, "good enough", which at this stage, you know - I'll take. At least I don't have to work while balancing on those damn joists anymore. I was utterly convinced that I was going to place one foot wrong and go straight through the ceiling into the family room. And probably wreck something else in the process. Something a little more... me.
Anyway, next up, even more fun! Electrical! More insulation! Drywall! Swearing! Possible injuries!
Oh, almost forgot - I promised to post some pictures of the new window from the outside:
Sheer gorgeous-ity! Or -ness. Something. I dunno. I'm tired and haven't had a beer in more than a week. Shut up.
