So I ended my hiatus this weekend. Yesterday very little happened and I started to brace myself for a VERY slow process to finish this job, but today it actually looks different! So first I planned ahead. The floors in my house were installed without a subfloor, so every floorboard joint is over a joist. I taped off where the joints would be if I kept it that way.
Not happening. This looks way too repetitive, so I’ll have to cut some of the floorboards in between joists. Note: some of these tape lines are on existing joints to remain. I am also planning out where my new joints go in relation to them. So here’s what I decided on.
Then comes cutting out the boards that are going away. There’s no way to save them; most things I read said to use a saw to make several cuts down the length of the board. Once the middle is ripped out, the edges can be carefully pried free from the other boards. But in the end, we used a router both to cut the ends and to make the longitudinal cuts and to cut the ends.
Then came the fun part. We used the PVC trim boards left over from the back as a fence and ran the router side to side on the boards where they were being cut. I had to lie on my belly to operate the router and my dad stood on the board straddling me. No photo, but it looked a lot like this. Except blonder.
This involved the destruction of a fair bit of my original floor. It still hurts. But wrecking a few square feet was the only way to save the floor in the rest of the room.
And then here’s what it looks like with the flooring out:
And then with the patch boards laid in place:
Now remember, these boards are sitting there. To get them in place I had to chisel off the bottom parts of all the boads on the female side of the tongues. The male tongues can fit into the adjacent boards without a problem. There’s more that needs to happen to install them properly; right now walking on these boards would not be a good idea. Next time I should have more to show you about that. Hopefully.
Chad's Crooked House 
that actually looks dangerous! I think I would have sacrificed the wood for more strength, stability and safety. There’s preservation and then theirs ones own freedom from crashing through ones bedroom floor. Ouch!
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Remember, my bed is in the kitchen. Strength, stability and safety should be in place next week.
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Aren’t you going to replace the missing parts of the sub floor?
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There is no subfloor; these 7/8″ heart pine planks are nailed right to the joists. I will be reinforcing them from below, which is why I tore out the living room ceiling.
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“Reinforcing” is the word I was hoping to hear. 🙂
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Yep! It would have been more practical to just put all the joints over a joists. But I’m shallow,
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I am exhausted just thinking about this – go Chad!
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