Raise the roof!

Adventures in Do-It-Yourself Home Remodeling

As I have mentioned before, a previous home owner carved a crazy archway between the living room and dining room. The archway was clearly too broad of a span to be supportable, and was causing the ceiling above to sag, as well as the plaster and walls to crack. This was one of the Major Projects that needed attention before Banjo Boy and I could proceed with anything else.

On Wednesday, we opened up the wall around the arch to get a peek at the framework inside. This step was easy (and simultaneously terrifying) because there was, quite literally,  no framework.

Archway:

1/2 an archway:

When I say no framework… I mean there was nothing, no studs, for at least a ten foot span, and the header beam had been cut on both sides and was left floating in the wall.  The only thing supporting the upstairs was a single 2X4, and a 1″ iron strap that had been used to “mend” the cut header. No wonder the floors were sagging so much.

We spent another evening finishing the demolition… cutting out the drywall and opening things up. We shoved a few 2X4s under the ceiling to act as basic support, fearing that the drywall we’d torn off had been somewhat load bearing.

NO ARCHWAY:

Yesterday we came in and built temporary walls on either side of the opening to support the ceiling and save our skulls should anything go horribly wrong, and then Banjo Boy and Father of Banjo Boy built a new header beam out of two 2X12 beams (shown below)  We also built sturdy posts with which to jack up the header beam.

Here you can see the support walls on either side of the opening, the heavy-duty new and improved header beam, and the temporary posts in their cute red bottle jacks.

Yes, they’re cute. But they are mighty.

We made sure the jacks were centered on a steel I-beam running beneath the floor joists, and then we began jacking the ceiling upwards, one crank at a time. The whole house groaned and creaked like a wooden ship. Slowly slowly things began to rise.  I could even watch the hardwood floors upstairs unbend!!! Eventually, we raised the floors about 4″.

Originally, I was very against doing things so quickly. I had read was that you should ONLY JACK 1/8″ a day to avoid damage to drywall, etc. So why decide to live dangerously? We  figured we’d be patching the walls anyway to repair all the previous cracks… and whatever new ones would just get added to the list. So we pushed that sucker right up to the max.

Once the floors upstairs were fairly level, we framed in the header beam with permanent posts and used metal clamp plates to further strengthen the bond between them.

I was allowed a hammer long enough to inflict this:

Not really. I did that while scraping the ceilings. I told you those stalactite ceilings were dangerous and had to go!

Any way. After everything was jacked up and the permanent posts secured in their place, we removed the temporary posts and jacks And WALLAH!!! Here’s the newly framed and properly supported opening:

Operation Anti-Arch complete!

Now that we’ve addressed the major structural issue, we can move on to making the upstairs livable! Then we’ll gut and redo the basement, redo the kitchen, add a second floor to the sun room and two bathrooms….. But that’s all in time. All in due time.