Rotten Wood Removed

I was feeling halfway decent this morning so I spent the morning working on the master bathroom. (Having only one toilet in the house this past week is getting old already! I'm definitely looking forward to having a nice new second toilet in the house!)

I had previously removed the old finish flooring to reveal a lot of rotten wood subflooring and about three layers of old, nasty vinyl flooring. Today I needed to figure out how much of the floor was rotten and remove it all.

I started pulling up the subflooring with my hands... it would just crumble as I grabbed it so it pulled apart quite easily but made a huge mess. It wasn't long before I decided to just cut back enough to make a 24"x24" hole.

First I marked off a 24" square... then out came the circular saw... and I started cutting... first, at only a 1/2" deep... I pulled up more subflooring...  then I cut a bit deeper... pulled out more subflooring... I changed the depth of the cut four times before finally getting to the correct depth... 1 1/4".  There was a layer of 1/2" subflooring and a layer of 3/4" subflooring. 

Before adding nailers and additional joists for supporting the new 24"x24" subflooring patch as well as for supporting the toilet properly, I figured this would be a good time to try removing the cast iron flange while I had the most room to work. Once I add those nailers and joists things will get very tight around the waste pipe.

I pulled out my Dremel tool and some reinforced cutting wheels... I had to find them first... then I started cutting into the flange. 

An hour and a half later, I realized this plan of attack wasn't working so I decided to just cut the waste pipe right up against the bottom of the cast iron flange. About sixty seconds later, the nasty old corroded flange was removed. Hopefully I still have enough waste pipe to attach a new flange otherwise I'll need to cut even more off, add a coupler, and then the flange with the appropriate length of new waste pipe. Either way will work but I was trying to minimize the number of new parts I will need to buy. 

Now I need to find some wood to temporarily cover the big hole in the floor. I'm too exhausted to continue and there is a lot of cold air coming up from the crawl space.