Made huge progress on my project today (OT)

I started this project probably 7-8 years ago by adding beams in the basement of my 130 year old house, and I have been at it in stages ever since. The objective is a new tile floor in the kitchen which has been linoleum over 1/4 luan over two very worn and termite eaten layers of pine since we bought the place in 1989. The main obstacle has been the humps in the floor. I wouldn't worry too much about valleys, but humps can be an obstacle to a good tile installation. I have been adding support to the beams which are on 2' centers, and have split at their ends. A few weeks ago I took up most of the plywood, then later both layers of board in one high area. A few days ago I removed most of the nails that were holding the boards down. They were hard to locate let alone pull because they are 12d counter sunk and rusty finish nails. Today I tackled the boards at another area of a really bad hump in the area in front of the sink. It is 1.5 inches high, or it was.

The first pic shows the termite damage in the subfloor under the upper layer of pine.




The second pic shows where I have removed more of the top layer of pine and a few square feet of the lower level. Where the level sits there was a big hump and it is now nearly flat. It turned out that the reason for the hump was mostly just the dirt formed by the termites years ago before they were exterminated. Now that I know that the beams really are as level on their tops as they are on their bottom sides, I know that they will be a suitable support for the 3/4 T&G Advantec new subfloor after I take all of the boards up. Cement board over mastic will go over the Advantec which will be glued and screwed. All of the cabinets will come out. Let me repeat that there have been no termites in many years.

Linoleum hides multiple issues that must be cut out to fix. Nice. Your intent is going to make it a silk purse. Jim

Looks good. Nice to see it fixed right. Just keep digging until you get
to something good.

We did an addition and remodeled everything else. It's amazing what you
can find underneath a floor. The pics are what was under our living room carpet. I don't remember how many layers exactly, but I took it all the way back to the original tongue and groove. We re-nailed it all with ring shank nails and put a layer of 3/4 plywood over.

I probably could have left it as we put carpet back down, but......

Glad to hear you were able to get rid of the termites.
Mom's house had to be torn down because we couldn't eradicate
them. Orkin tried for about 20 years and refunded the money. :roll:

Jeff, I have seen some really badly warped fir tongue and groove flooring, so I can see that they would want to cover it well, but unless you use a lot of glue between layers of plywood, just one layer of 3/4 tongue and groove is a lot more effective, LOL.

A friend of mine bought an old old farm house one time, and the floor in the kitchen was all rotten including the joists.
It was over a cellar with a dirt floor. A friend of his said just cut it all out, fill the cellar up with sand and lay
brick on it. He said don't worry about getting it flat, because I will come in and grind it smooth. So my friend did all
of that pulse he made lower cupboards out of brick with arched door openings. His friend came back to grind the floor,
took one look and said I can't grind that, those are Mexican hard brick. Well it looked cool and the cupboards were
nice,but the floor was hard to walk on.