This weekend was an interesting one. We did actual demo. On the first floor of the house we had a lot of issues with the floor heaving. So, with the help of our awesome friend Felicia Davis, we created a giant hole, by cutting out the subfloor. Then we were able to find a solution to the problem.
The cause of the hump was the fact that the entire house settled around the front basement foundation that only runs half way through the front living space. In order to correct this we had to shave down the joists that rested upon the foundation, and also cut back the other joists so that we could drop them down onto a new header that we attached to the front basement foundation.
This was a long painstaking process that also included cutting out all the old radiator pipes, waste line and whatever the other miscellaneous abandoned pipes were under there.
We finished the full process today and are now ready for subfloor. Because of how severe the hump was we will make up the difference by having a threshold in the doorway of the first suite. This will allow us to have an even floor at the front of the stairwells.
Once we opened up the floor we also found the issue with our sagging second floor in the hallway. The wall in the center of the first floor, directly below the hallway, wasn’t placed above any supports. We poured two footings that will support another joist directly under the wall and hoist up the sagging. It is minimal sagging, but it will make a definite difference. This bearing joist will be placed this week after the concrete sets.
Granger and I even found enough time to set almost all of the electrical boxes on the second floor. We had to wait until we were confident Derek wasn’t going to kill himself while we were upstairs. Sometimes the remodeling processes can get really hairy.
With a fist bump, high five, and congratulatory smack on the behind we are feeling super accomplished this week. Even though it looks like we went a bit backwards we have actually made a bunch of improvements. Please enjoy this week’s update video, and while you are here please scroll all the way down to the bottom of the blog and subscribe so that you don’t miss a thing, including our public open house that we will host as soon as the project is completed.