An Adventure In Old Home Recovery

October 3rd Update

Project update:

Last week was measuring the space in the attic, so not much to report there.

Today however, the wait is over. The joists and girder replacement has begun! After fighting for several weeks with multiple banks for a loan, the funds are in place and the work started in the back of the house at the Kitchen.

The floor doesn’t move like the moon walk at Disneyland anymore!

To get there though, every joist had to be removed and replaced. Normally, you would think that removal would take sawing and handling of beams. Not this project. They were taking the beams down with hammers, turning them into sawdust that could be swept up into black contractor bags I dubbed “house body bags”.

Every joist is now a double width 2″x8″x however long is needed to cross the span of the structure.

To get the materials list, the contractor said he needed to measure every joist. When I said I had already done that, they stared at me. When I showed them the sketch I made with everything numbered, marked, annotated, and measured, one asked “Are you a f***in’ architect?!?!” I answered with, “Maybe a little bit?” Apparently 30+ years of drawing dungeon maps for games really paid off!

They think they’ll be done with the project either Friday or Saturday. As in, this weekend. Wow!

The only bad part is that the concrete base of the coal fireplace fell to the basement floor. Roughly 600-800 lbs of rock like material there. That will need to be rebuilt once the joists are done. At least we were able to save most of the tile.

Lastly, the bottom of the stairs basement door, which was falling off the hinges, and the frame was pulling away from the wall was removed. It now looks so much better!