The floor in this room was rapidly sinking. In the picture below, you can see where the floor has dropped. My cat really isn’t as big as he looks in this picture.
I was getting a bit twitchy about the whole sinking floor thing. I didn’t care for it. Every little creak was starting to rattle my nerves. It was, “Did you hear that sound?” all day long. Finally my husband contacted some carpenters.
This is what the floor looked like underneath the vinyl covering.
In addition to a busted support beam, there were assorted broken joists and rotted subfloors.
What caused this? We think it was a failed underground drainage pipe that took water from the gutter about 100 feet to a ditch. The underground pipe was old and filled with organic matter. We think the water was finding a path that lead directly under all of this damaged wood. We got that idea from the stream that appeared under our house on a very rainy day, which was also a day in which we could see the crawl space from inside the house via a very large hole in the floor. The day before that, the crawlspace was dry. Rain water is now being drained above ground.
The floor in front of our carport door, the most used entry door, was shoveled out. The only thing holding it up was what? magic? LOL
In all, we replaced around 500 square feet of floor and then our carpenters (Barkley and Bryan) laid some nice looking tile. It takes a while to lay 500 square feet of tile if you count all the snow/ice days we had. Our carpenters did a fine job on everything.
Later, I got to set my desk and pc back up.
And that is the end of this story.
Sheri says
Its good to have a solid foundation! I sure do love your floors and glad you are back up and running.
Lisa says
Oh my! I had no idea it looked that bad under there. Good thing you had it replaced. It looks beautiful now.
Donna Young says
Sheri, a solid foundation is truly good! I’m relieved to have one again.
Lisa, I used to crawl under the floor from time to time to check on it. The rest of the joists and subfloors under the house, except for the living room floor, looks almost new.
Deb says
“Organic Matter”? Hmm… I do not want to think too hard about that one.
Old floor = scary. The new floor is very nice. People underestimate the skill it takes to to a good job with tile. Good work hiring professionals.
Rose says
What? where is the picture of everything set back up with you smiling at us????? You cheated us!!!
It looks beautiful and i“m so happy that it is fixed and you can stop worrying!
Applie says
The floor is beautiful!
Donna Young says
It seems to be a little prettier every day. It’s really growing on me.
I haven’t tried to pick up one of the small black squares in a couple of weeks, so I must be getting used to those too. =D
Rose, oopsie, I don’t have a picture of me with the stuff all set up and snazzy looking.
Elaine H says
WOW
The floor situation was BAD. I am so glad that you were able to get this taken care of before something happened.
Donna Young says
Me too!
Handyman Dallas says
Your floors do need heavy repairs, it’s a good thing it’s finally fixed – seems like they’d done a great job doing it as well.