The Great Floor Shore-Up Part 1

Puppy comfort is very important...I brought their dog beds downstairs because cement is chilly!

Our house is shaky.  Crazy shaky.  As I said in this post, the floor shook so much it made a pile of picture frames fall off the dining room table as I walked by.

The reason for this is that our floor joists need help.  Our basement is unfinished so we can see all the damage.  Many of the joists have been cut, are unsupported, or were fixed badly.

Here are several joists are cut and pieced together:

This joist is completely cut and there was just a little wood patch over it:

This is where the original gravity furnace was and they patched up the hole without having board go all the way across the span:

So the process that we started recently is reinforcing every single joist.  I ordered 26 fourteen foot long boards and had them delivered.

On the first day we got 6 of them up, but we have figured out a way to get them up faster next time.  Hopefully it will only take 2 more Saturdays to finish.  Part 2 is taking place this Saturday so we'll see.

Though the next 6 that we need to do are all tricky because some electric & plumbing needs to be moved and there's a weird situation where the old furnace used to be.  So we might only get 6 more done because those will take more time to do.

Before we can fix these ones we have to move the plumbing and electrical out of the way:

And we have to fix this part carefully because the hardwood floors are nailed into them so we can't just bash out short boards and put in long ones.  (Even though this was patched we cut a hole in the carpet upstairs and put a camera in the hole and it looks like hardwood and not plywood so PHEW!)

So here's how you reinforce floor joists.

Step One: Make the board is the right size and make some cuts if necessary.  Knock out the old blocking between the joists so they're out of your way.  And brush off the old joist and the new one so there's no dust/spiders/sawdust in between the glue bond.

Step Two:  You need a temporary short girder to shore-up the floor and take out some of the sag of the floor.  We used 2 floor jack posts and used the girder from when my brother did this same project.  You get it set up and then turn the jack part of the post up to raise up the floor joists.  If you have two girders and 4 posts you can get more done in a day because the posts need to stay up for 24 hours.

Step Three: Then put construction adhesive on the board.  Don't make complete circles, because then you trap air in between the boards.

It's important to have a puppy who lays right in the middle of everything:

Step Four:  Put the board up and start clamping!  Make sure when you put the board up you put the crown (the high point) of the board facing up (touching the subfloor). If you're like us the board won't go up because the floor is bowed and your board is a little too tall so you have whack it with a sledgehammer to force it up until you are about to die (this is why we only got 6 up).

You want clamps with a big jaw so you can get the bond tight higher up on the boards:

Step Five:  Then you start screwing and nailing.  Start with coated deck screws and put screws in every foot and half.  In between all the screws you put in nails.  We used an intense framing air-nailer with hot dipped galvanized ring shanked framing nails (they have special glue on them). 

 Brave Allie came down into the basement for the first time!  She was so scared of the scary loud banging, but she felt safer down by us then upstairs listening to the noises alone.

Step Six:  Now you need to put up new blocking between the joists since in the beginning you knocked out the old blocking.  Originally we only had one row of cross-braced blocking in the center of the floor, and we replaced it with two rows of solid blocking both off-center.  Blocking is good because it ties all the joists together to spread out the weight of the floor.

Step Seven:  Enjoy your non-shaky floor!  Leave the floor jack posts up for 24 hours while the construction adhesive sets up and dries.

Destruction has begun

Today is my oldest nephew's 11th birthday so I thought that today would be the perfect day to tell you about a voluntary unplanned project he started at my house.

As I referenced in this Dreaming & Scheming post, we are soon going to be knocking down one of our kitchen walls.  Inside that wall is a chimney that was used with an old furnace and maybe an old stove.  I have been hoping the bricks would come down mostly in one piece so that we could use them decoratively in a new fireplace.

So when my family was over one weekend for a different project my mom and my nephew decided to try their hands at taking down some bricks in order to see how challenging of a project it would be.  In the attic the chimney is exposed so they went up there to try it out.

Well once they got going my nephew got really motivated and they took turns taking down all of the bricks that they could reach from up there!

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Those two boards laying on the ground are covering the hole where the rest of the chimney is.

They used a small sledgehammer to bash into a masonry chisel to get the mortar out and then the bricks just lifted out.

As they made their way down the chimney the interior clay insert began to appear.  There were two fully exposed and a third partially exposed and they took them all out.  We hopefully can reuse them in our future outdoor pizza oven!

Here is one by itself:

As part of this project my mom carried almost all of the 10 two gallon buckets filled with broken bits of mortar down our rickety attic stairs:

Thank you, Mom!

Most of the bricks are stacked up in the attic since we don't have a place to put them yet.  We have plenty for the future fireplace since they pretty much all came out in one piece.  We should even have enough for the future outdoor pizza oven!

My mom stacked them along structural walls that could take the weight of the bricks:

I called my nephew today to wish him a happy birthday and to clarify some details about the project for this post.  I interviewed him a bit and typed it all out here so you can see what a wordy boy he is:

How hard or easy was this project?

"kinda hard" 

What tools made it easier?

"the sledgehammer & the chisel"

Are you looking forward to taking the rest of it down?

"Yes!"

I also talked to my littlest nephew and before he even said hi he asked me:

"When are we gonna knock down your basement wall?" 

He may be just a little bit excited about helping with our kitchen demo.  To be clear we are knocking down a wall in our kitchen, not our basement.

He also said "I'm going to bam it down and crash down your whole house" so I'm glad he's not our General Contractor!

Here are some action shots of my big nephew at work:

 He really and truly is a dedicated hard worker and is such a big help.  I didn't even ask him to do this!  Kudos to my brother and sister-in-law because they have raised a great boy.

100th Post - A Before & After Extravaganza

This is the 100th post on Crafty Homestead!  I can't believe it's taken this long to get here, but before we moved in I really only did like one post a week and I did take a whole summer off and there was the whole appendicitis thing.  But anyway...

I decided the best topic for this post is an update of the House Tour page and a post with all of the Before & Afters.  Though none of these are truly "Afters" yet, because they are more like "Current Progress" shots.  There's still a lot of changes to come: refinished hardwood floors, rugs, real furniture, more art, a full kitchen renovation, etc.

I am using a different camera and it has a lens which is not as wide as the one I was using when we first bought the house, so I did the best I could to try get the same shots. 

Here we go:

-The Front-

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The house looks really gross right now (ugh...March) so I looked through old pictures and this outdated shot was the best I could do.

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God I wish the yard still looked like this!!!  I need spring

-The Porch-

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TINY BASIL!

-The Entryway-

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This picture is going to come when the sun goes down because the light makes the picture nuts right now.

-The Living Room-

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We have a really classy puppy gate to keep them out of the Craft Room

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-The Craft Room-

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-The Dining Room-

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-The Kitchen-

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We have a whole cart devoted to dog food/snacks/treats...

-The Laundry Room/Pantry-

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This is also kitten's land so the dogs can't eat her food or poop

-The Breezeway-

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That is a portable compressor for a basement project that has begun

-The Bathroom-

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-Bedroom #1-

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-Bedroom #2-

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That's the screen that can go in our storm door which we need to find a new place to store.  Also that's all my American Girl doll stuff for when my niece comes over.  And our classy window covers for when guests are sleeping in this room.

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-Bedroom #3-

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We really need to reorganize these tool shelves...

-The Basement-

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Usually I look around the house and see how much we have left to do.  It gets overwhelming sometimes and I feel like we haven't gotten anything done.  But looking at all these Befores and going around taking the "Afters" today has really showed me that we have gotten a lot done in 18 months.  It has been nice to take a post to appreciate that!

Also I have updated the House Tour page with all these new pictures.