There was no choice but to remove the subfloor since the tile was so severley stuck to it (see tile mess here). When doing a kitchen renovation, trust me, you dont want to run into this problem. Under the subfloor was an old wood floor in half the room, and floor joists in the other half. The floor joists had “sister joists” attached to the sid of each one that leveled out the floor for tile. The bowed floor dropped nearly 2 inched from side to center. The problem was that the sister joists were also glued to the subfloor in that half, so they had to go also. We basically stripped half the room down to joists. These pictures are a bit blurry but you get the idea:
bowed floor joists
bowed floor joists
So the next step was a new subfloor and then a layer of hardy board cement based sheets. This processes was continued into the pantry and kitchen area. Rebuilding the floor from scratch was not part of the plan (or budget) for this kitchen improvement. There were probably some work-arounds that could have been done, or I could have kept the old floor. At the end of the day I think I did the right thing with a nice level floor throughout.
new hardy-board on kitchen floor
hardibacker cement board leveleing floor
In front of the sealed up fireplace self-leveling cement was pours to make it flush with the hardiboard.
Kitchen Improvement: Rebuilding and leveling the Floor Complete
level kitchen floor
Level into the (soon to be) walk in pantry, coat closet, bathroom:
level bathroom floor
If you are including an island in your new kitchen, don’t forget the electric before sealing up the floor!
electric for kitchen island
