Helping my son tile his kitchen: from flooring to structure to electrical ***updated 5/21/25

My son bought a cozy little house several years ago. 936 square feet, two bedroom, one bath, with a full unfinished basement. Although this 1959 house needs remodeling, my son is a mechanic at heart and prefers to work on car projects. 

But a few months ago he finally got the motivation to start on his house again. A dozen boxes of ceramic tile, obtained very cheaply, have been sitting in his living room for a long time, so he decided to tear out the ugly and worn kitchen floor and install the tile.

Now, we did do some work on the house prior to this latest binge, which involved moving the basement stairs out of the dining room and into the living room. We also demolished the scabbed together basement and started framing out a basement bathroom. But this was 3-4 years ago.

Here's a floor plan to help you understand the things we were undertaking:

The kitchen had vinyl sheet flooring laid over half inch plywood, which in turn was laid on top the hardwood strip flooring. But, the house was constructed by laying this hardwood strip flooring right on the floor joists with no subfloor. So, in order to put tile in the kitchen and have not it be higher than the adjacent hardwood, the kitchen floor needed to be stripped to the joists. 

The top of the joists will be the top plane of the subfloor. This would put the top surface of the subfloor 3/4" below the top of the adjacent hardwood. Everything had to be built from this point, because we needed to accommodate 1/4" plywood, the Ditra membrane, the thickness of the thinset, and the tile itself. 

So we developed a plan to glue and nail sleepers in each joist bay, locating them 3/4" below the tops of the joists. We then would cut widths of OSB to glue and nail on top of the sleepers so that our new subfloor would be made flush with them top of the joists. 

First step is demo. We started by removing the base cabinets and peeling off the vinyl and plywood:

Under the plywood were two more layers of vinyl. Ugh.

We started making cuts in the hardwood parallel with the floor joists to make it easier to remove. At first we thought we might be able to salvage the hardwood, but the two layers of vinyl were adhered like crazy. So we just cut it, pulled it up, and hauled it to the landfill.

This is first pieces of the new subfloor:

You can see how we recessed the OSB into the joist bays. You can also see the landing stepdown. The basement stairs were located here on the north wall (the dining room table is now occupying that spot). When the basement stairs were in their original location this landing functioned as the first step down into the basement. Which also means the entry door used to be positioned six inches lower, but we raised it up in anticipation of eliminating the landing. 

At this point we were forced to make a detour. Some prior remodeler had removed the wall dividing the living room from the kitchen. A beam had been installed in its place. After we had stripped part of the floor adjacent to the north wall we found that there was no structure underneath the plate, where a post should be for the beam. So what was holding the beam? 

Now were were curious. And troubled. With the heavy snow we had this winter the sheetrock covering the beam had developed cracks, and a couple of other cracks had appeared other places in the ceiling. Now we needed to know how this was structured (or even, if it was structured).

We started cutting sheetrock. The north wall had this:

What you see here is a 2x4 wall (jack) stud holding up the beam, and another 2x4 turned sideways (this is known as a strong back, which makes a two pieces of wood rigid by being fastened together to form a right angle). You can also see the previously-mentioned area below the wall plate, which was completely empty. Those little stubs of wood sticking up under the plate are cripples, vertical pieces of 2x material that carry the load of the wall to the foundation below. 

But there were no cripples under the post. So we immediately put in a jack to temporarily support the beam, and then we glued and screwed some blocks into the space below the post. Now the point load goes all the way to concrete.

The beam itself (two 2x8s nailed together) had less than an inch of length actually sitting on the jack stud. While the jack stud with a strong back was marginally sufficient, everything else about this was substantially sub par. 

We needed to check the other end:

This is not looking good. The base of this jack stud was sitting on the hardwood flooring, in between floor joists, with no post in the basement, no cross bracing, and no doubled floor joists. Plus the post itself was just not good enough:

The previous remodeler used the very same technique on this end, a 2x4 jack stud and a strong back. But this is not buried in an exterior wall, it's the end of a stub wall with the only sideways support supplied by how well secured the stub wall is into the floor and the trusses. And it really wasn't secured. You can see the spikes toenailed into the strong back.

Also notice that the wiring is fastened to the strong back, which means this entire area was opened up but this remodeler just couldn't be troubled to add in more structure or put in more than four nails. This is just not sufficient. Just a light hit with someone's hip could take the beam down.

The beam itself was also problematic:

This beam was installed 1/4" BELOW the ceiling surface, and the ceiling sheetrock was left in place over the beam. Sheetrock cannot carry a load, it just compresses into powder. It should have been cut away and the beam positioned higher and in actual contact and nailed to every truss. But there were only six nails toenailed up through the sheetrock into the trusses. 

So the beam wasn't holding anything. Or at least, it wasn't holding anything until a snow load was on the roof and the trusses gave way a little, coming to rest on the beam, which cracked the beam's sheetrock, dead center vertical.

Astonishing.

It had to be replaced. We first checked the ceiling height in several places and found it dropped a half an inch right about center span of the beam. So we built a temporary wall at the height of our longest measurement, which happened to be exactly eight feet:

This brought the ceiling even. We demolished the posts:

This again is the north wall, after we removed the jack and the beam. The original top structure is comprised of the stud wall cap first, which was cut back to accept the beam, an inner and outer rim joist above it (the inner was also cut away), and then the bottom plate of the gable is on top of that. Somewhat unusual construction, because ordinarily the gable is just built on top of the cap.

You can also see that the previous remodeler did not remove the ceiling sheetrock as mentioned.

Out comes the beam:

Time to begin reconstruction. The first thing did was nail in a jack stud: 

 

We then cut a second jack stud based on the 11 7/8" height of the BCI joist, which we used to replace the 2x8 beam. Plus, there will be a 2x4 wall stud attached to each side of the two jack studs. We will put those in later.

On the other end of the beam we first needed to deal with the floor (at least temporarily). We cut off the mangled end of the wall plate and extended it to 33 1/2". We did this for two reasons. First, to fully cover the end of the fridge. Second, to be able to position the jack stud on a floor joist. We then went into the basement and installed a couple of pieces of blocking between the joists. This will at least give it some strength until we get a post put in.

We measured for two king studs and a jack stud and made our cuts. We installed the two kings and now we're ready to measure and cut the beam. 

BCIs aren't heavy, but anything that long can be hard to manage. Our friend Taylor answered the call to help, and we lifted the beam into place and tapped the jacks in underneath it on each end. We nailed in the jack studs and nailed up through the flange into the trusses. 

Here's what it looks like:

As mentioned, we will add a stud on each side. The old wiring with the silver woven jacket will be updated.

Here's the other end:

And here's the whole beam:

Now. We can finally get back to the floor, which is the actual project we set out to do.

We had a couple of little items to finish up. We put in the subfloor piece around the heater duct, and also closed in the gap at the north wall:

We then spread some thinset and started screwing down our 1/4" ply:

Once dried we spread some more thinset and laid down the Ditra (this thinset is made especially for Ditra). I wasn't there for that, but our good friend and expert tiler Phillip came by to assist. Once that dried overnight my son spread some more thinset on top of the Ditra and let that dry:

We started laying tile. Interestingly, this was the easiest part of the whole project. It took only a half a day to lay all the whole tiles:

We let these set up and put in the cut tile:

That's Boomer you see.

The sheetrock was pretty well mangled by a previous electrician who cuts some holes to run new wiring. Since we're here it makes sense to replace it, because that also gives us access to the wiring and plumbing. The replacement wiring really needs to be stapled, and the abandoned circuits need to be removed. Plus, my son is thinking about going with a corner sink which means some plumbing revisions.

More to come.