I'd like to somewhat EAT CROW. (recant my prev statement of no problems). As coincidence would have it, I had carpet laid in my latest remodel. They finished it last Tuesday. Whole house. With ONE EXCEPTION. All the crap that was all over the house has been stored in a sun room. This one room is concrete slab, and has one layer of 3/4" ply. This room has been "unconditioned" for 3yrs, nothing but the old carpet padding on the floor. Piled ceiling high with...stuff. Sealed off from the rest of the house, unconditioned, humid environment, vast temperature swings, and...the walls are nothing but jalousy glass. Emptied the last of the stuff out of this Sunroom last night so the carpet guys could come finish the house. I found one warped/bubbled at the edge 3/4" piece of plywood. I went ahead and pulled it up. Smelled musty underneath. There was a layer of tar paper in between ply and concrete. No mold growth bad enough to justify removing anything else. I fully expected it to be worse considering what I'd found. I think I found the cause though. This piece of ply is against the backside of a chimney. Appears water has been leaking around the chimney, running down the chimney, and then out underneath the plywood floor. Not a river, but, enough to cause this piece to warp. I can't complain too much though, that ply has been there almost 40yrs. Given the floor heights in between this room, and the rest of the house, I really have no choice but to replace it with what was there, and in the same manner. (correct? anybody?) AND..FIX THE LEAK! (seems it's difficult to find a roofers now days that know how to "flash" a chimney with something that doesn't come in a tube...lol)

Linda - Sounds like a fort! Both you and Casey might have something there about the boiler and coal rooms. Although the basement has been completely redone, the concrete (seen from inside two closets) could have possibly been an area of the like. Makes sense! There were some pipes going up into the concrete. I did not take the time to check out what the pipes connected to. Seems to me that we looked at a home last year that had a "fireproof" ceiling in the basement where the still working boiler stood. I remember thinking that the basement would be hard to finish out because of that ceiling. It was not flat. The basement room really wasn't large enough to do anything with it. In this current home, the basement is huge! Casey - The servants bedrooms and bath are over the existing kitchen. I do hope the bedroom floors are not concrete should we decided to make the move. Linda - Thankfully, the kitchen has been redone with new plumbing and electrical. It's a rather large kitchen for the era of the home. There is also a pour concrete terrace. What I don't understand is that there are 4 chimneys, but only one fireplace. The chimneys look as though they are within the house and not running up an outside wall. There are no "bump outs" inside the house to indicate a fireplace or chimney was covered up or once there. I guess the others were used for coal or boilers? Perhaps ducts run through the walls???

Flooring is typically installed first and cabinets installed over the finished flooring. But in an older home, sometimes there are compromises. In my own house, about 13 years BEFORE we replaced the cabinets, we took up the old vinyl tile flooring in order to put in hardwood floors. Since this house was built in 1948, it had plank-style sub flooring throughout. The previous owner had put down plywood on which he could install the peel and stick tile that was there when we bought the house. So in order to make our new hardwood flooring level with the floors in the hall and DR, that plywood had to come up, but the cabinets were staying. The hardwood flooring company had a devil of a time cutting out that plywood in order to install the hardwood floor (damaged the kick plates substantially but we just painted them black so the damage didn't show). Now, the cabinets were coming out and new ones were going in! My new ones are installed on the old plywood-over-plank flooring, and they were able to adjust the kick plates so that the somewhat jagged edges of the new hardwood were hidden by them. We just put the refrigerator on the plywood as I did not want to have to have the hardwood floor people come out and try to patch it in (location of refrigerator was moved) and refinish the entire floor. It works just fine. When dealing with an old house that has been remodeled more than one time, one must get "creative"!

tear it out now while youve only wasted a few hundred $ and a few hrs..... and make a smart hiring decision going fwd. Maybe wait til after twins:) and until you can afford to have it done correctly. But be ready first to get FURTHER misinfotmed on this forum.