Memorial Day Weekend Cover Work Day

I spent the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend doing a bathroom renovation with Cover Home Repair in New Hampshire. For this particular job, there was a Cover leader working with two volunteer crews doing flooring repairs in a mobile home. Each volunteer crew had two people and we were very ably led by Diane Reinhardt.
Team one was working on repairing the floors in two bedrooms and my team was redoing the bathroom floor. The bedroom floor team was made up of a really nice father-son pair from Norwich. I worked with a gentleman I had worked with before, Rich, so we were able to get going pretty quickly. Rich lives in Enfield so he didn't have to travel too far for our job.
Rich and I first had to take up the linoleum from the bathroom floor which we hoped to save to lay down when we were done. We were able to do this because it hadn't been glued down. Once we did that we had to take up the subfloor which was rotten in all the wrong places, like under the toilet. Mobile homes may look flimsy but I can tell you from experience that they know how to attach a subfloor to the joists. They use a combination of 2" staples and glue so you really need some leverage and strength to get it up. Added to that is the fact that it's a very small space (it's a bathroom after all) and that you want to keep the insulation that's there between the joists without wrecking it and you have a situation that requires a lot of contortions to get the job done. Let's just say that you'll feel muscles in your butt the next day that you don't normally use.
The next step was installing blocking between the joists to support the new subfloor we were going to lay down. This is necessary because a mobile home subfloor spans the whole trailer without regard to rooms, walls, etc., so we needed to put support down under all the spots where our new subfloor would have seams.
This turned out to be the toughest part of the job for a couple reasons. The first is that since it's such a tight space, maneuvering to get leverage to install the blocking between the joists is really difficult. Keep in mind you're doing this with no floor so you're walking and kneeling on joists, which don't exactly give you a stable base to work on. The other is that Cover uses screws and drivers for just about everything (at least on the jobs I've done with them) rather than nails. This makes it much easier for volunteers to do work without complicated and dangerous tools (like nail guns) but in a flooring situation, it was really hard. I yearned for my framing nailer to just pop in the nails; instead, I was using a nice driver and 4" screws. I did it, but I stripped a few heads in the process and I got a wicked core workout, too! I got a little frustrated but working with Rich helped since he's such a nice guy. He kept me from throwing the driver through the wall but most importantly his presence kept me from swearing, which I am wont to do when wood, tools, fasteners, etc. don't want to cooperate with me.
The father-son team finished up by 3:30 but Rich and I were still going at it in the bathroom. After getting all the blocking in place, we had to cut new pieces of Advantech subfloor in all kinds of crazy shapes. This was because we left the tub and vanity in place and had to work around the toilet flange, vent pipes, etc. This was fussy work in cramped and poorly lit conditions so it took a while. Rich had to leave around 4 so it was just the Diane and I "gettin' it done". We really wanted to make sure the home owner had a toilet by the time we left so we had to add some more blocking, cut and install some more subfloor and then lay down the linoleum. I summarize that in just a quick sentence, but this was some of the fussiest work of the day. Luckily, the Diane is a real pro so she was able to keep us on track and do a good job of it. By the end, I was just following Diane's lead.
We finally got the toilet installed and made sure it didn't leak before leaving. I was so pleased that we were able to leave the client's house in better shape than when we got there. I have to admit that doing this level of work on a house was more than I bargained for and it was difficult at times to stay positive. Building a wheelchair ramp is much easier than a bathroom floor renovation but the need for what we did is huge in the Upper Valley and I'm so glad that Cover is there to help alleviate even a small amount of it. I'm also happy that I can help a little in this regard, too.