Bathroom Renovation #2 - The Concrete Decision

Once the tub was removed I noticed a split in the concrete slab that had been poured between the bathroom floor joists. The split allowed me to shove a crowbar between the layers and I began ripping up a 1.5 inch deep layer of concrete the ceramic tile was attached to...Now I could finally start to see what we were dealing with. Below the 1.5 inch concrete layer was about 4.5 more inches of concrete. But worse yet, the joists surrounding the concrete appeared completely rotten from nearly a century of concrete moisture. Sensing I was way over my head in this project, Melissa and I began posting questions on Do It Yourself forums. I marked up the following picture (looking up at the bathroom floor from our basement) to help describe our bathroom floor construction to the various contractors that would hopefully respond to our questions.In addition to the concrete and rotten joists, we also found rotten wood all around the plumbing side of the tub we removed.Most of the responses to our DIY posts recommended removing all concrete to get the weight off our poor house and to allow us to create a stable, solid, flat floor. So we abandoned our previous plan of using self leveling compound to fix the sagging, cracked concrete floor and decided to remove the concrete.

I knew hiring contractors to do this would be expensive and take a while to find good ones. I also have a hard time trusting contractors and sometimes feel they don't respect the rest of the house. I suggested to Melissa that we drive her dad, Bob, down with us from Ohio after our Christmas visit (and fly him back several days later).

We've worked several projects in the past with Bob, including building a backyard storage shed and pergola. Bob tends to work quickly and figure out complicated construction solutions with sound knowledge and he typically does it without overspending on materials. We called Bob, showed him the pictures of our bathroom problems, and he agreed to offer his help.