Building the floating wall: finding a floor joist.

Part One: ripping up a piece of the floor in order to find out where the floor joists are underneath…

Whether we run power to the floating wall or not, I realized I had to rip up at least one piece of the wood flooring. I needed to know where the floor joists were in order to anchor the wall. Armed with a fresh blade on a utility knife, I took to scoring the tongue lengthwise on both sides and on both ends.

I picked a section that crossed perpendicular to where we planned on building. It took a little bit of effort, I'm not gonna lie. To help spread the tight-as-all-get-out boards even just a millimeter, I pounded in a putty knife. That helped immensely.

I'd go maybe eight inches or so before the boards were too tight to cut, then reposition the putty knife. Repeat. It took about an hour-and-a-half to get all the way through on every side. Then began the work of prying up the board, gingerly and not-so-gingerly. I even had a helper!

After maybe twenty minutes, I got a putty knife under the wood. Success! Not having seen any nails, I was surprised then to find hidden nails every foot along one edge of the board. What the heck?

That's right though… There's nothing quite like doing demolition in PJs. Truth be told, after finishing our morning coffee K went off to sew. Squish was playing between his room and her craft room, so I figured I'd take a look at the floor. An hour and change later, I was still in my PJs ripping it up with a crow bar. Good times.

Where the Flooring Gods were not with us on the hidden nails, they were with us in the fact that a floor joist was right in between the tape we had laid down!

I'll likely build the wall a couple inches over to center it more on the joist, but that's better than having to move it a foot or more (the joists are 16" O.C.). I quickly made some measurements and marked off the joist. 

The piece of flooring is being glued since each end got a little banged up in the process. Then I'll put it back in place. It shouldn't be terribly obvious that it's ever been messed with. Hopefully.

Tomorrow: Home Depot for materials, which includes some 2x8s, sheetrock, 1x4 trim, a furring strip, lag bolts, 3” 16D nails and drywall mud. Pretty simple stuff.

ps… After spending apparently a couple of hours ripping up one piece of flooring, which was unexpectedly nailed to the subfloor (and noticing that the row next to the section I ripped up had the same hidden nails), I quickly made the executive decision to not bother trying to get power to The Wall. It would've been cool, but sat squarely in the Nice-To-Have category. Oh well, I'm not spending several days pulling up and reinstalling a bunch of flooring so we can light up a piece of art we hang. Onward…