The Kitchen Floor Nightmare
// September 14th, 2008 // homelife, pictures
So we need a new dishwasher. The one we have leaks. And leaks more than we realized. Oh, and it’s an Insinkerator, circa 1980. Apparently the company has since realized that putting their eggs in the garbage disposal basket was a good idea.
We knew that we probably had a smaller space than normal for this diswasher, but we took our measurements and went out in hope of finding one that would fit. We measured the height of the dishwasher at 32 1/4″ where the standard height is 33 1/2″ +. This was discouraging. When the Lowe’s guy suggest that we re-take our measurements, we went home and discovered foul play. The previous homeowners had raised the floor in front of the dishwasher by a couple of inches, trapping it in for eternity!
Well, thanks to the previously mentioned leakage, our floors have been warping anyway. Apparently the homeowners laid down plywood underneath the kitchen tile. They did place hardibacker on top, however left a few gaps in it. Oops. Plywood warps when it gets wet. We now realize that we need to redo the whole thing.
We start by removing the tiles. That was easy! And fun! I wanted to keep as many in tact as possible to either reuse in our bathroom (if we EVER get to that project) or give to someone who needs them and kept bags of the broken ones in case some freecycler would be interested in mosaicing.
Once the tiles were gone, we get a good look at the water damage. The wood was definitely growing mold and warping. One piece of the plywood was about 2 inches thick with water while the one next to it was less than an inch thick. No wonder our tiles were coming up!
Well, the hardibacker was properly installed, minus the gaps of course. It is BONDED to the plywood and we hit our first big issue. How do we get this subfloor (technical term I learned through all this) up? We borrow a friend’s circular saw and through a series of trips to Home Depot (shout out to Anthony at the HD!) we realize that we have to buy a blade specifically for the hardibacker since the wood blade won’t cut through it. Since they are bonded, we’ll have to cut through the floor layers twice.
Since Dave is out today, I have a ball with the circular saw the first time around. That hardibacker went up in smoke… or dust rather. It worked really well. Plus I got to use power tools. Bonus! Of course most of our living space is now covered in dust. Suck. I now realize the benefit of plastic walls. I immediately go in with the wood blade for the plywood. This … did not work quite so well. I figure there is not enough of the hardibacker gone since the blade keeps getting caught on it. So I dig in. With a chisel. For like 4 hours. Urgh! At least it will all be worth it when I can get one piece of the subfloor out, right?
I finally decide I’m in a good spot and get the saw ready. First time I try, the dang thing kicks back. Hmm…. maybe the blade is backwards. Nope. Second time, kickback. I check the ‘net and they can’t say much more other than make sure the surface is even. So I try in a different, more even place. Third time, kickback with a mega vengeance. It went back, hit the hardibacker, and the blade came loose. Luckly everything stayed where it needed to, but still. Yikes. I was done. I was so done. So done in tears. And now I’m stuck.
So I got food and now I’m sleeping on it. Hopefully everything will seem roses in the morning light. I don’t know. I really tried. Sigh.
