One would have needed to support the edges of the stone to prevent it from
cracking since there is no subfloor beneith it. Notching the joists may
have been necessary to prevent it from being too high. Perhaps the original
installation had a nicer floor and the remodel in the 70's removed it in
favor of what you have now.

At least its not round. The tilesetter will deal with it like a wall and
only needs to make straight cuts (may even be able to score and break).

In remodeling and even in original construction, some materials like that
get used just because someone has it and is looking for an application. It
may have had an earlier life as a table top.


"Ken" wrote in message
ups.com...


wrote:
Looks like the tan floor was there with a big old toilet on it. Then
they wanted a new toilet but when they removed the one with the larger
footprint there was a gap in the tan flooring material that was not
covered by the newer toilet. So they improvised and put down a piece
of material to cover the gap.

The toilet itself is relatively new, there is a date stamped inside the
tank in the 1970's, so it was replaced at some point. There are stains
around the edges that show the outline of a previous toilet.

I'm pretty sure that the marble baseplate was there when the bathroom
was originally installed since if you look at the underside of it from
the basement, someone went to a lot of trouble to frame around the
edges of the baseplate with no other subfloor under the baseplate.
They even cut a joist out and attached the cut ends of the joist to the
adjacent joists with headers. There doesn't appear to be any need to
do that (no plumbing was in the way) other than someone wanted the
edges of that baseplate to be supported by framing members.

Ken