Floors Galore.

In addition to continuing to lay pennies (Thanks MAdams for letting us buy $42 in pennies) on the office floor, we decided to re-do the floor in the upstairs 'working' bathroom. I am typically against wood floor in bathrooms but this bamboo floor looked really cool and is ultra-renewable and pretty low cost.

Of course like all projects this one really had its hurdles to jump over, the first one being the clawfoot. The tub is 90+ years old and weighs I would say right around 400lbs. I quickly realized I was not going to be carrying it on my own. In addition the pipes were pretty old and there was very little room to grab the drain pipe to try and remove it. My MacGyver solution was 2 hydraulic car jacks on either end of the tub and a dolly. This sort of worked. The jacks lifted the tub very easily but the pipes were so rusted together that despite all the connections being loosened they pulled the plastic drain pipe out of its connection to the main drain. (Actually it also looks like PaGyver never glued that joint... amazing it didn't leak at all.)

After that discovery I loosened the no hub connector to the plastic and jacked the tub up until the entire 18" drain pipe cut off was above the floor. Then luckily i was able to separate the tub drain from the stub. The tub had to stay on the jack however because the tub drain is still 4" below the bottom of the clawfeet. Wheeled the tub out and got to work.

Next hurdle was that the door was too low profile to allow for the thicker floor. 30 minutes of hauling the door up and down the stairs and slashing the base with the router and it was all set.

From there it was a lot of cutting custom floor boards and gluing the panels down. Putting the tub back in left some nice compression marks in the new floor, but its still a vast improvement. From there it was pretty easy to re-connect the "broken" pipe and glue it in. First try no leaks, all good! Still need to floor around the toilet but it was very late when we finished the tub area and I was still tired from traveling.

I really like how it came out, and have some custom bamboo quarter round toe boards in mind to match. Also have some crazy ideas for paint.

Lessons learned: Small diameter car jack wheels will dent floors. Routers are the most versatile of tools. Old plumbing sucks.

Other random events: Clovers have taken over our yard completely. It looks very cool but I am really really glad we went with raised beds because they are everywhere.
Got rid of the old water softener last night. Thanks trash guys (they must hate us)
The garden continues to outgrow our demands for lettuce and spinach. 1/2 tomato plants is producing heavily. Peas are producing very well. Sweet potatoes are coming in strong and Belle has some artichoke started.
Thanks MaGyver for watching Kai and all of the 'epic family for having us over for turkey. I had a great time.