lowering bathroom floor

[VinoTinto]

has anyone dropped the floor of a reno bathroom to avoid the 30mm "hump" resulting from the new layers of tiles, underlay etc? This is a new bathroom in an old part of the house, so the timber floor at the entrance is (obviously) the same as the room. Put new -shallower-joists in? Decapitate the stumps? I know it seems a lot of effort but I can't figure a work-around to get a pro job.
Thnks in advance
Vino

[bitingmidge]

Vino,

Sorry, there is no workaround! You could of course batten off a whole new floor.....

If you really badly need to do this..decapitate the stumps, DON'T use shallower joists.

Glad to be of assistance!

Cheers.

P

[duckman]

More information please.

Are you wanting to lower the entire floor by approx. 30mm or grade/slope the floor to a central waste point in order to eliminate a shower base?

What are the approx. dimensions of the room?

[Marc]

When ideally you should run new bearers 30 mm lower sitting on new stumps, and don't forget you will need to cut the "old" bearers and prop them up under the wall, perhaps, and only perhaps, you could find something that can replace your 100mm joists for 70 mm joists. Steel? 4"x3" hardwood, machine it down to 100x70, and have additional bearers to reduce the span to half?

Only speculating since you give little details about materials, dimensions, span, hight etc.

This is an expensive and cumbersome exercise, and is only reasonable to attempt if you intend to rip the whole bathroom out anyway.

[VinoTinto]

Duckman,
the room is 2.6x2.6. The objective is to lower the entire area by 30mm (this being the additional height created by tiling onto the existing floor surface) The shower is over the bath, so no prob with the base. The reason behind all this is to avoid the barely disguised join between the entrance and the new 30mm higher floor- made even more noticeable by the door which opens inward and so sits 35mm+ over the old entrance. Quad etc only seems to draw attention to the issue. What do pro bathroom guys do?
Thnks
Vino

[journeyman Mick]

Vino,
the only "work around" I can think of here is to fit a ramped threshold from the existing floor level up to the raised tile bathroom floor. The other way(s) involve a lot of mucking around as you'll basically have to gut the whole floor whilst still providing support for the walls. Murphy's law says that the bearers and joists aren't going to work out perfectly for this anyway so you may have to put in extra stumps just to keep the walls supported and then drop your new joists down, probably on new stumps etc etc etc. A whole lot of labour and materials just to avoid that 30mm step up.

If you lay 6mm fibro on your existing floor, with a waterproof membrane and ceramic tiles you should be able to bring it in at 20mm or so. Stop the tiles on the inside of the doorway and fit a polished timber threshold that runs from 20mm on the inside and flush with the existing floor. A little bit of mucking around (a couple of hours V a couple of weeks). But hey, if you've got money and time to burn gut the floor by all means.

Mick

[VinoTinto]

thanks Mick- mmmh, hadn't thought about that wall support issue. Your probably right- knock up a nice piece of trim and just "get over it"
Vino

[George]

Vino,
Unless you have heaps of time, money and/or patience I would live with a small step. It is not uncommon as far as I have seen.

I pretty much did what Mick said. Floorboards were sheeted with 6 mm fibre cement sheets. Waterproofed the sheeting where required and tiled over. Finished height was probably 15 mm above the original floor level, which in my case was not visible because the adjoining room has a floating floor.

If you are really keen you could remove the floorboards and replace with compressed cement fibre sheets (16 or 19 mm thickness I think). Tile straight over. Would give you a smaller step at the adjoining room.

George

[VinoTinto]

thnks George- good idea!!
Appreciate all the replies
Vino