On the Level

I haven't talked about the floor in the area that is slowing becoming the new powder room.  But it is now time to address the fact that this particular section of the room has a bit of a fun house feel.

The highs and lows of the floor are hard to explain.  I do know that at one time there was a wall in the basement that contained the old coal chute.  When I bought the house there was a large hump from one side of the alcove to the other right where this wall lined up in the basement.  In other words, the floor inside the alcove had fallen and the wall in the basement held that short stretch of flooring in it's original position.

But how it got that way matters not.  How to fix it matters alot.
Dan began by removing the hardwood floor and pulling ALL the nails stuck in the subfloor.  Then came a layer of plywood.

Then came a layer of fiber board.

This was set in thinset.

Latex glue was applied.

This was followed by leveler which did not completely do the trick.  It seemed that nothing was going to get the random hills and valleys out of this small section of flooring.

We were beginning to think it was possessed.  A little more build up was required with more leveler.

My tile guy agreed to put one final coat of leveler down around the edges to feather everything as smooth as possible.

Whatever dips and bumps showed up after that dried would have to smoothed out with adhesive.

Finally it was deemed level!

And so it was.  The tile is now down.  Not grouted, but down.  We got things a little out of sequence but that happens when you are scheduling in advance.  So before grouting we plan to finish smoothing out the walls, sanding and priming.  We are inching our way closer to pretty stuff.