Another hiccup in the remodelling

So, I've been kind of surprised that up to this point we haven't had any major problems and things have been going almost on schedule. Notice the "up to this point" comment. We discovered the reason for the floor levelling compound--there was a section of the flooring that was sinking. And now we know why: the floor joists were just sitting on dirt!

The joists also have various problems. Some of them were cut through, partially or fully, with a previous remodel; others are rotting, have termite damage, or have broken under the pressure of removing the flooring. We've decided that it's time to go with the professionals. We feel like we're now having to fix a hundred years worth of people doing things unprofessionally and we want it done right. Besides it would take us at least a month--hopefully, full-time professionals will be able to do it in a week. There will be several advantages to doing this though: the floor will end up perfectly level, we will have the crawl space excavated and open access to it so that future problems won't require removing the floor, we can properly support things so that we don't need to worry that our new kitchen will cave in, and we can make sure there is good insulation on heating ducts and piping.

The good news is that we have removed at least two-thirds of the flooring (we put the particle board down to walk on) and the rest will be much easier to remove. Besides the levelling compound, the people that installed it also used various pieces of wood to fill in the space which they screwed down EVERY 3-4 INCHES with 2.5 inch long screws! Talk about over-kill! And MAJOR pain to try to remove. But almost all of that is gone now. And we've cleared out the whole wall space where the fireplace was so you can get a sense of what the new opening will be like--I'm so excited! (Behind the black plastic is the family room that we are currently using as a temporary kitchen.)