Thinking Out Loud

Sometimes the work seems to jump all over the place, but there is a reason for it.

After the upstairs was gutted, we realized that the floor was quite bowed.  It was like a big salad bowl, hollowed out to the center of the house.  Maybe not that bad, but certainly noticeable.

After a small section of the main floor ceiling was knocked down, so the problem could be identified, we realized that someone had apparently moved a supporting wall about three feet away from it’s original location.  To make matters worse, the wall was actually not supporting anything – there was a gap between the wall and the floor joists for the second floor.  On top of that, the wall was not supported on anything from the basement.  The wall simply could not have been placed in a “more wronger” place. (I know, that’s not good grammar, but you get my point)

Although it sounds ridiculously easy when I’m simply writing it here, it was a lot of work to repair the damage.  We had to add teleposts (which were, by the way in the wrong place originally) in the basement along the main beam. We also needed to add support to the stairwell structure where all of  the original support had been removed in order to make room for the washing machine and drier.  Basically, anything that could have been done wrong, was done wrong.

Repairing the stairwell support, and spotting a  couple of teleposts where they really should be improved the situation.  We actually raised the center of the house up enough to get it level across the middle, straightened the stairway up, and made the house creak a lot untill everything settled into place.

A beam was added to the whole length of the house at the main floor ceiling to make sure things stayed that way.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?