Our hopefully, NOT, never-ending saga

It's not so much us being fickle, but more Murphy winning the battle with our coach floor. If you care to go back, you can find the write-ups in Jan, Feb, and Nov posts in 2014.  So you don't have to do homework, I'll do a quick recap.

Our coach was built with glossy tile flooring throughout the entire front, galley, hallway, shower, toilet room, and partly into the bedroom.  We were never in love with glossy part of it, but it's just how it came.  Now at the end of 2013, we started noticing a broken tile in front of the refrigerator which finally became a soft spot in our floor.  Remember this is a 2007 coach.  So when we got to Florida the winter of 13-14, we knew we'd have to investigate, which we did by pulling up the broken tile.  What did we find?  A rotted out floor!  We had had a leak for probably 6 years that we never knew about.  When the coach was built, a panel had been installed in the outer wall behind the refrigerator closing off what would have been a vent had we had an RV refrigerator.  It was never sealed!  So every time we washed or it rained, a bit of water would come in, go down the wall behind the frig, go under the tile, and eventually rotted out the floor.  We did luck out a bit, as we have a 2 layer floor separated by a robust and waterproof membrane.  That saved the undermost layer, but it sealed in the water and completely rotted out the top layer over a 70 square foot area.  To say we were sick was an understatement.  But we dealt with it, rebuilt the floor, ripped out all the bad, installed new plywood, and eventually took out every bit of tile in our coach.  After rebuilding, we had a new tile floor installed in the galley, hall, shower, and toilet compartment, and installed engineered wood flooring in the rest of the coach.  We did all the demo, rebuilding, and nitnoy work, while we had a tile guy do the tile, and a wood floor guy do the wood.

Our tile man researched an appropriate mastic to use and felt he had found the best product for our application, in a moving, twisting, and bouncing down the road house.  And we trusted him.  We bought the expensive tile, mastic, and grout and he installed it in Feb of 2014.

Which brings us to today, but not quite....  2 years ago, we were in Oregon to have some work done, Jan left in the truck and headed over to the shop, it was close by, and I went to bring in the slides to join her, and KAPOW, I thought it was a gunshot, a tile broke as the slide roller went over it!  I managed to tape up the shards, got the slide in and went to the shop.  We told them what happened and Erik came in to investigate and we found the mastic the tile guy used never adhered to the tile or the plywood.  And Erik casually mentioned that eventually all of our tile would be coming up.  Just fantastic...

So to now, we had noticed several other tiles were loose, but we lived with it until now.  Since we were sitting here for 5 weeks, we decided we would demo the tile floor, yes, this will be the 3rd floor in this area.  Sorry for the long drawn-out explanation.

A couple days ago, we looked at each other and decided this was it.  Let's do it.  And we did.  This was not planned before our departure from Florida, so we are a little tool impaired, not too badly since I carry enough to do most anything that comes up.  We pop the first loose tile, and pray, even though we know we don't have any leaks, you still wonder as you lift it up, will you see signs of moisture?  Well, thankfully no sign of any leaks!

You can see how terrible the mastic was
It did not stick to the tile on the top,
and didn't stick to the floor in front

Stuck to this tile, the plywood not so much

And for the most part a little scraping and the mastic
just pops off

The mastic was so bad, but it made this job easier, as we didn't have to work too hard to remove it in most areas.  You have to find the bright spots somehow.

Plugging away

Having a blast!

We had to pull out the refrigerator to get the tile out underneath, and decided to replace the floor where you can't see with a finish piece of plywood.  Now where is my circular saw, oh yeah, in our storage unit in Florida.  I can rent one for $20/day, or buy another one for $39, hmmm.  So with our new saw in hand we can now cut our new plywood.

Frig out of the way

New floor going in

Even with the work you gotta eat, so take out it is.  Sushi in Colorado, can't beat it!

Squid salad

Tuna and salmon rolls
Yummy!

I know, back to work.  We decided this will be the LAST time we ever do this, come hell or high water, so we plan to replace as much floor as we can that is even questionable, and screw it down very securely.  So off for more plywood and screws.  We need 1 1/8" screws to fasten the 1/2" ply to the 3/4" subfloor.  And guess what, you can't find that length in Durango, so we have to order them.  Not that bad, only a couple days.  Meantime we get all the tile up and thrown away.

Tiles gone, done for the day

So amazingly, there are a couple areas where the mastic actually stuck to the plywood enough we couldn't get it clean even with the multitool, so we opt to just replace the plywood.

Bad mastic covered plywood coming up

First new piece in, even okayed by Bert

So we kept working our way along, trying to remove as much OSB as we could, and the old mastic covered plywood, kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle.

Sizing up the pieces

Putting the puzzle together

Out with the old

We finished up all the plywood, drilled all the holes for the screws which we are still waiting on, and made an incredible mess.  You can't believe how much sawdust is created by cutting flooring with a circular saw in the motorhome!  

Jigsaw puzzle complete
A bit more scraping, and screw it down
and we'll be ready for our new floor

It took 3 days, but it is a mixed bag, terrible that we had to do it, horrible that the mastic didn't stick, but the good news is, that it made the demo so, so much easier.  Our original demo of the tile took weeks of hard work.

We did have a little scare, Jan went in to get something out of our freezer in the basement, and with a yelp, she announces the freezer isn't working!  Well after a bit of panic, we find we must have dislodged the plug with all our in and out of the basement.  We get it back on, but all of our packages of scallops are thawing.  So what is the saying, when you get lemons make lemonade, well we altered it, so when you have thawing scallops make scallop chowder, and, man, it was delicious!!

Thank you Jan, with a little help from Jasper White