BATHROOM FRAMING

Back in the planning stages, we thought that the mantle work could be postponed until the footings for the addition were to be done since the mason and his crew would be on site at that time anyway. After some consideration, it was obvious that the mantle footing and foundation had to be done before the bathroom, not after. There were structural changes that could not be made with a new bathroom in place. In addition to that, when the major construction starts, the only area that we will have to live in--is the family room and new bathroom. The family room will be our bedroom, so plastic tents and wheelbarrows transiting with cement is right out.

To prepare for the mantle footing work, I had put up temporary knee walls in the crawl space to support the joists.

The joists were then cut back out of the way and a section of the beam had to be removed to be eventually replaced by a ledge on the new mantle foundation wall. This new ledge (sill) wound up 5 1/2 inches below where the joists needed to be.

This wasn’t a mistake, the blocks are 8 inches high, and another row of block would have brought the sill up too high. To close the gap I used cement fill with a 4x4" on top.

I then replaced the old short joists one at a time with new longer ones. The new span was almost 10 feet.

For the cement work preparation, I built a form from some 1x3" spruce that I had laying around. The top of the spruce was set 2" above the existing sill, and the ends were boxed to keep the wet cement in the form. I mixed a 60 lb. bag of ready-mix and filled the form. It needed to set for about 2 hours before I could remove the form and adjust the final height. I checked the clearance from the bottom of the joists to the new sill top with a 4x4 scrap. If the scrap didn’t fit under then I scraped a little off the top until it did. Then the new 4x4" sill was tapped into its final resting place. The next day I removed the temporary knee wall to let the joists bear on the new mantle sill.

At this point in the framing, I was able to hire my old friend Scott (Scott Builders) to help out.

He was able to fit in 2 days of work right before Christmas. He needed to work on the new bath framing, cut a new door from the library into the family room, and patch in floor joists in the entry foyer (previous Zen garden). He did a great job in half the time it would have taken me.

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