Helping my son tile his kitchen: from flooring to structure to electrical

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 kitchen floor and install the tile.

Now, we did do some work on it 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. Further, the house was constructed by laying a deck of 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. 

In order to not be above the tops of the joists, we developed a plan to glue and nail sleepers in each bay, located 3/4" below the tops of the joists, so that the new subfloor could be made flush with them. This would put the top surface of the subfloor 3/4" below the top of the adjacent hardwood, which what we needed for some 1/4" plywood, the Ditra membrane, the thickness of the thinset, and the tile itself.

So we started demo-ing. 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 sawing the hardwood into sections parallel with the floor joists to make it easier to remove. At first we thought we could 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 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. 

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 on the beam had cracked, and a couple of other cracks had developed in the ceiling. Now we needed to know how this was structured (or, if it was structured).

We started cutting sheetrock. The north wall had this:

What you see here is a 2x4 wall (jack) stud cut off at the top to accept 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 is completely open. 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 them. 

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

The beam itself (two 2x8s nailed together) had about an inch of length actually sitting on the post. The post itself was marginally sufficient, but everything else about this was substantially sub par. 

We needed to check the other end:

This is not looking good. The base of this "post" 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 same technique, 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 nailed the stub wall is into the floor and the trusses. 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. This is just not sufficient, especially in earthquake, when just a couple of horizontal movements could take the beam down.

The beam itself was also problematic:

This beam was installed 1/4" BELOW the ceiling, and the sheetrock was continuous over the beam! The beam wasn't holding anything! Or at least, it wasn't holding anything until a load was on the roof and the trusses gave way a little, coming to rest on the beam, which cracked its sheetrock, dead center vertical.

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.

Astonishing.

It had to be replaced. We first checked the ceiling height, which was exactly eight feet, interestingly. But as we measured the height along the beam it dipped a half an inch. So we built a temporary wall exactly eight feet tall:

We demolished the posts:

The picture just above is the North wall after we removed the beam. The top structure is the stud wall cap first, an inner and outer rim joist above it (the inner is cut away, as is part of the cap), 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 ceiling sheetrock was not removed when the beam was installed.

Out comes the beam:

Time to begin reconstruction. The first thing we installed was a jack under the remaining 1 1/2" of the wall cap:

 

We then cut a jack stud based on the 11 7/8" height of the BCI joist that will replace the 2x8s. Plus, there will be a 2x4 wall stud attached to each side.  But this is as far as we went on this end for now.

On the other end 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 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 in preparation for the basement post. This will at least give it some strength until we get that post put in.

We marked for two king studs and a jack and made our cuts. We installed the two kings and were 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 jacks 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.

And here's the whole beam:

I will post more as we start in on the floor, the actual project we set out to do.