When I was gathering info for the Techniques column in this issue on handling remodeling jobs, I heard an entertaining story from the NWFA’s Rusty Swindoll, who was a wood flooring contractor for many years before getting off his knees and into an office chair. He recalled a job where the subflooring was so bad that when the homeowner sat down on the toilet, he and the toilet fell right through the floor. Fortunately the free fall was arrested by some pipes, so he didn’t plunge (so to speak) the full depth into the crawl space, and he came out unscathed except for, perhaps, future trepidation about reposing on the throne. The point of this touching tale was you never know what your subfloor holds (or doesn’t hold) when you start a remodeling job. (For the full article about remodeling jobs, see “Remodeling or Remuddling: Are You Making the Right Choices on Remodeling Jobs?”)
The point of this touching tale was you never know what your subfloor holds (or doesn’t hold) when you start a remodeling job.
I could personally relate to this. When we decided to remodel our master bath and took a sledgehammer to our shower, we discovered the shower had been built incorrectly back in 1969. Over the decades, the plywood subfloor had transformed into disintegrating black dust, and the disgusting old aggregate shower pan spanning two joists was the only thing that had prevented my husband from falling into the garage below (I have no doubt my accident-prone better half would have been the one to take that plunge).
Here at HF, we decided our Remodeling Issue was the perfect time for our own remodeling project. Happily, it didn’t involve any crazy bathroom stories, but we did revamp the magazine from cover to cover. It had been a decade since our last redesign, and it was time to take a fresh look at both our content and our design. When we did a reader survey last fall, we were thrilled to hear our dedicated readers enjoyed our current content. So you’ll still find your favorite columns, some with a fresh approach and all with an updated design. If you haven’t already received your copy in the mail, you should receive it any day. In the meantime, you can take a look at the digital version online. Once you do, let us know what you think. And if you have your own crazy remodeling story you’d like to share, involving a treacherous bathroom or not, we’d like to hear that, too.
