A Three-Holer

Because the crawlspace under the back of the house is too small to work in, we had to lift up sections of flooring back there and work from the top down. We cut away three parts, one in the ladies' restroom and two in the adjoining utility room. Fortunately, we were going to replace the vinyl flooring in both rooms anyway, so this just accelerated the process.

Here's the ladies' room floor with the toilet removed and the floor cut away. Sadly, this meant cutting some of the original redwood subfloor, which I hate to do. It's half-inch tongue-and-groove redwood, perfectly fit and laid on the diagonal for strength. I'm sure it hasn't been disturbed in 120 years. But there was no way to avoid it; it had to come out. Once removed, we could reach down into the crawlspace and work on the plumbing.

On the other side of the wall is this utility room, which used to hold the dishwashers when this was a restaurant. Again, I cut some rectangular holes in the floor and the plumbers reached down and worked from above. Between the three holes, plus the parts they could reach by crawling under the house, they managed to rationalize the whole plumbing scene under there. Progress!