OSB Sucks

I don't like OSB. I never have. It's like glorified particle board. Get it wet and it'll turn to mush. Sure, it has some advantages over plywood, in that when you drop something heavy you won't delaminate a large area - you'll just punch a hole. How about just not dropping that nail gun while you put up the rafters and avoid the whole problem to begin with?

When we started the addition on our house I specifically requested plywood for the subfloor - 3/4" tongue and groove subfloor plywood. Well, when I came home the builder had decided to save himself a few bucks and installed 3/4" OSB tongue and groove subfloor. Great, it was nailed and glued down, so not coming up. Plus the walls had already started going up on top, and the builder wasn't going to tear it all down to replace it, especially not at his cost. Little did I know that this would haunt me down the road.

The other thing is the room on the back of the house to which the addition butted up had sagged some, and instead of jacking the floor joists up again, the new floor was sloped down to meet - so my new bathroom has a corner that's 3/4" lower than the rest of the room. That's a pretty big difference, enough that you really feel it when you walk across the floor. I've started looking at how to level it, and was thinking I could get lucky and use self leveling compound (SLC) and just pour it and be done. No such luck - I haven't found any SLC that can be used over OSB. Plywood, sure. OSB, not so much. Arghhhh.

The other grand thing about the OSB is that it isn't stiff enough between joists to support natural stone tiles. So I had to strengthen it, but since I didn't want to have an inch threshold I had to do all the work from below. Thankfully my dad and brother in law helped and made quick work of it.

But still, I think OSB sucks. I'm looking forward to the day that it does not cause problems for me, and I sure am glad I made the builder pull up the OSB he had laid down for my above-roof deck (none of the waterproof membrane manufacturers would warrant their product over OSB.) Too bad that when they pulled it up, they screwed up the slope of the joists and now I have puddling on the deck... If they had built it right from the beginning, it would have taken less time, less materials, and they would have maybe had a satisfied customer. As it stands, I don't want to ever see them again, because I might lose it if I do (and then get my ass kicked because I'm a sissy.)