Buttoning Up

The last couple of weeks have been all about the floor in the kitchen. Last time I wrote, Dennis was getting ready to pull up the subfloor in one area to repair a rotted support piece, a sill plate. The sill plate that was rotten was in direct contact with the old concrete foundation that would have been on the outside (before the kitchen addition was done). For a couple of days, the floor was open down to dirt while he pulled out the rotten piece and another piece that was resting on it but not rotten, replaced the sill plate, treated the piece that went on top of the sill plate (I think Joel called it a drip plate), and replaced it as well.

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Then Dennis replaced the plywood subfloor over the addition in the kitchen. With the top flooring off, you can see the kitchen addition clearly. We don’t know exactly when the kitchen was added to the original “cabin,” but we think this addition to the kitchen was done in the ‘70s, when the back part of the house that contains bedrooms and bathrooms was added. A new foundation was poured at that time, and new floor joists were laid. The builders didn’t use the same building techniques of laying planks for the subfloor. They used plywood, so the addition becomes visible when the subfloor is exposed.

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When that was all replaced and the floor closed up again, Dennis began laying the ¾ inch tongue-in-groove subfloor over the plank floor to level the entire floor so the hardwood can be nailed down. In the photo below, the floor is almost buttoned up.