June 2, 2007

from the ground up

the silver lining to all the anguish of the demolition phase was being able to see all the places in the house that had been destroyed by water and shoddy workmanship and watch them being fixed and secured

structural work started in the basement where we shored up the columns of the house by building cement piers at their base after the digout.
this was done first, to ensure that the pounding of the demolition wouldn't cause any damage.

the majority of work to be done was on the 2nd & 3rd floors.
the damage to be repaired was due to 3 things:

leaking tubs

rain coming through loose mortar

plumbers cutting huge sections of the joists to run pipe

this required augmenting and/or replacing the existing support structure
which is where these guys came in handy:

heavy duty hangers to support the new headers

the left wall in the back: details of the construction

when i saw this work being done, it really gave me the confidence that were on the right track and that exposing so much of the structure (or tearing out the walls depending on how you want to phrase that)
was a good decision.
even though i know nothing about this kind of work,
when i saw it done i had a very visceral reaction to it;
it just felt so "solid" in my body

the problem/the solution
the headers above the top floor windows and the joists on the edges of one of the skylights were completed rotted from leaks

an iron bar replaced the window header and the area was rebricked

the joists on either side of the skylight were completely reinforced from end to end: the new beams were pocketed and sistered to the existing ones that were crumbling, this helped with the sag of the roof as well

Posted by neene at 8:22 AM | Comments (0)
Categories: house

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