All Rotten on the Western Front Part 2

Originally posted on 2018-10-13

We have had a very productive week in the westernmost room.

At the end of Part 1, we had just discovered that our foundation was not level after discovering that most of the joists had rot issues and the sill plate & rim joist had rotted themselves out of existence. It was looking very dire for us getting the kitchen moved, as we tried to come up with a plan that would rectify all the issues that we found.

Pulling up all of the sub-floor gave us the good news that not all of the joists and to be replaced (hooray!) and only one of the stringers needed to be completely replaced (yeah!). Unfortunately, we also found another tree stump (boo) that we would need to remove. But at least we past the point of finding more problems and got to start on repair.

First up, the foundation. We boxed around it, then poured concrete to make the entire western wall level, placing new screws to hold the sill plate in place into the wet concrete. Once that was dry, we could replace the sill plate with much more success than we had the first time we tried it. We also replaced the sill plate on part of the northern wall, where needed.

Then, as mentioned, we pulled up the remaining sub-floor to see how bad the southern half of the room was. Good news, the southern half was a lot less rotted than the northern half. With that knowledge, we ripped out the joists that needed to be replaced, as well as the northern most stringer that needed to be replaced. We built a new stringer at the same time we started working on conditioning the crawlspace.

After removing all the tree stumps and other organic material we found, we dumped a bunch of gravel into the crawlspace to level it out and to give a layer on top of the soil. Once that was in and level, we put down a layer of Durofoam EPS Rigid Insulation and taped that together with Tuck Tape. Next step will be putting vapor barrier over that.

At the same time that was happening, we had to prepare the plumbing closet for the installation of the boiler and the water filtration system. The contractor that we got to install the boiler and the rads were scheduled to come in this past week, so we had to get the sub-floor installed and drywall on the wall before they arrived.

So we have been working around them most of the week as they installed the boiler and the rads, which needed to be done before the water filtration can be installed, and when they are done they will coordinate with the contractor to get propane hooked up to it. Once that is done, we will have hot water and heat! Hooray.

We got the rim joist installed on the west wall, but we still need to level out the foundation on the south wall a little bit. We also still need to install the new rim joist on the north wall, which we have purposely left off until we could wheelbarrow in all the gravel. On a whole, a very productive week. On schedule for next couple of days is tiling the plumbing closet and installing the sub-floor.

Once all that is done, we can work on the kitchen that started all this and hopefully get it moved soon. It’s been an exciting week as we’ve made definite progress and it feels good to start fixing the problems instead of finding more of them. Stay tuned for the conclusion of the western front.