Tearing Out & Repairing The Floor 8-25-07

Hello again!
For some odd reason this weekend I started working on the first level floor to see what kind of damage was done when the building was leaking.
Let's just say it is better and worse then I thought.
This is a picture of the arch with the bottom removed.
Dad and I discovered that his floor level is about 4 inches higher than mine. I guess this is because I am on the downhill side of the street????
This is after I also removed the old water pipe located along this wall.


After removing the pipe dad & I decided to find out if there was a crawl space in the back of my building like he has in his building. We cut a hole shown here in the backroom floor and didn't find anything.
Oh well! It's not like I don't have enough holes to fix.
(See below)



This is a closeup of the backroom hole we cut.



After the backroom hole cutting we moved around to the front of the back wall to checkout the sewer pipe situation. This will be the main sewer for the the upstairs, so I was glad to find a clean out under this spot in the floor. This is really good news.



Here is what I was talking about earlier.
We decided to rip up the flooring on the West wall to see what might possibly be the problem with the springy floor boards.
Just more good times!



Well this is what we found.
Rotten boards, old fixes from who knows when & another discovery about the building.

This part shown here, we believe was a later addition. The boards were not built into the walls like the others towards the front of the building.
This is also where the apartment ends upstairs and you can see a difference in the brick color and a new brick starting point.



This is what we believe may be the older section.
Click on the photo to see how the boards are built into the brink and where also leveled with bricks coming out of the wall.



A final parting picture of the area.
I am glad we opened up this area as it was still very wet and moldy. This will allow some more air to move under the floor and hopefully dry it out.



This is a picture of what happens when a cast iron pipe is pushed from the ceiling rafters.

This was the original sewer pipe from the upstairs area of the building and I really needed it to come down so I could start running the new sewer pipe.

Don't worry though this was a well thought out plan and the important part is nobody was even close to this when it came down. Just another hole in the floor.




Well I will leave you with another picture of the pipe.
Next weekend is the Labor day weekend so I will have hopefully lots of pictures of the progress or lack there of.

All are welcome to stop by this Saturday and Monday as we will be working both days at the building.

Please stop by some of the other open stores that are already making the downtown area a better place to shop and dine.

I also thought if anyone would like to advertise their downtown business or soon to be business for free on this site just send me an email and I will put up an ad.

Also if you check us out regularly send us an email to let us know that you are checking us out.

Later,
Chris & Jen