Hooray! I finished just before midnight, tired and sweaty, but feeling good about my progress.

They’re big and heavy and hard to maneuver, but I got them cut to size, carried them up to the second floor, cut my openings for pipes, fine tuned the fit, and screwed the OSB into place (6″ spacing around the perimeter, 12″ grid spacing within). There was some water damage beneath the toilet, but that was easily cut out and replaced.Īt this point, I was still planning to use Ditra with my tile, but the finished floor would have now been too low, so I opted to lay OSB on top of my plywood to add thickness. The plywood subfloor beneath the wood was mostly in good shape. Next I set about getting the floor ready from there. Safety glasses and gloves are a good idea too. I had to use my Dremel Multi-Max Saw in a couple of places, but most of the wood came up easily with the combination of a pry bar, wrecking bar, and claw hammer. It added more time to my project, but it was the right thing to do. I started to worry that in hopes of saving myself a little time by not ripping out the wood floor, I would be creating costly plumbing fixes in my near future when it came time to reattach everything. Same with the tub drain and toilet stack. There is some give in the pipes, but not a lot. When I had the cast iron radiator removed temporarily, I was advised to keep the connections at the same place. It would have added more weight to the floor, but more concerning was the additional height. I could have added a more dimensionally stable subfloor (OSB, plywood, or cement board) on top of the hardwood.

Our bathroom had hardwood flooring, and you can’t lay Ditra directly on top because solid wood shrinks and swells with temperature and humidity changes. It’s an uncoupling membrane that isolates movement between the subfloor and finished tile, preventing cracks over time. I had been planning all along to lay my tile on top of Ditra. I’ll share more in an upcoming post about the tile installation, but first I want to point out a big mistake that I almost made (and how I fixed it). I’m using porcelain (wonderfully durable), and have been taking care to do the job right from the prep work through to completion. I want my bathroom tile to have longevity. Thank you for making this project possible! This bathroom renovation is sponsored by Lowe’s.

Install hardibacker board on subfloor