House Update - Support Beam

Once we got the upstairs floors done and the windows and doors trimmed out we took a bit of a break from major construction.  

Our idea of a break is to do massive gardening, thinking, hauling, mulching, more thinking, figure out how to get ductwork  to the upstairs bedrooms so we could all survive the summer, disconnect the ductwork to the front end of the house, install ductwork to the upstairs [yay! a.c.!], more thinking, more hauling, digging, canning, move the master bedroom upstairs to the guest room, move the living room to the old master bedroom including the actual furniture that almost didn't fit through the actual doors, pull up the laminate flooring in the living room, rip off some of the aluminum [!] siding on the front of the house, cut a 'door' in the old front wall of the house, seal up the old hallway to the front room to keep the mess out of the house, gut the old front room, dispose of the debris....

It wasn't much of a break.

Especially since the next part involved mixing, by hand, a ton of concrete.  Not kidding.   Eric is my hero.

The concrete was for two footers and two piers [inside the front section of the house] upon which will rest a load bearing support beam.  Load bearing is a scary thing.   It means it holds the house up.    Hence all the thinking.   This is not something that we want to screw up.

Here's a pic of  Eric in what used to the be the front room.  Piers poured.  He was just getting ready to lay the boards down to build the I-beam that will support the center of the second story.

Wait.

'But, Robin!   How?..', you ask, 'HOW is the second story staying up now if he's just now building the beam??'  

An excellent question.   There's another beam in the floor of the second story that runs the entire length of the house and it's resting on stuff it needs to rest on.  The second story is safe. Those piers are dead plumb under the upstairs beam.  Once this new beam is in and a support wall between it and the beam above, the house will be EXTRA sound.   We like extra.

Here's a pic of the roof situation in the front of the house.  You're looking straight up into the ceiling of what used to be the front room.  

WARNING!   This pic is confusing.   Also, it's blurry.  Sorry about that.  It was darkish in there.  I've labelled a bunch of stuff and then tried to explain it below.   You can click to biggify the pic.

Explanation:  Start from the top of the pic on the left side.

• See the new beam?   That beam runs the length of the house.   It's in the floor of the second story.   The new ceiling joists [which are also the floor joists of the upstairs] are on top of that new beam.
• You can see the plywood decking above the new ceiling joists.   That is the floor decking for the new upstairs.
• The blue round things are old light fixture innards on the old ceiling joists of the front room.   Notice that the old ceiling is about 2 feet LOWER than the new ceiling is.   [Don't get me started on the ceilings of the old house.]
• On the right side of the pic you see the Old Roof Decking and the Original Roof Rafters.   Yes. That's part of the original old roof, tucked under the new addition.   Eric stripped the roof when we put the second story on, but only took out the peak of the roof and enough to set the new beam and build over the old stuff.  There were excellent reasons. All that old stuff is about to come out very soon.

I kind of love this picture because it really illustrates the careful thinking and bizarre sequence of events we've had to co-ordinate to live in the house comfortably-ish while doing a major renovation.

Eric is a genius.

After the Rain, the Roof

Finally.  

After the rain.  The roof.

Eric went with rafters instead of trusses because we didn't have any way to get prebuilt trusses up there, but rafters can be built in place.  

First Eric had to put in the ceiling beam for the second story and set in all the ceiling joists.  That makes the bottom of the roof triangle.

Then he had to build a ridge beam to make the top point of the roof triangle.   Then all the rafters had to be cut  and attached to the ridge beam and the joists/walls below [which is the ceiling of the new second story.]  

Did that even make any sense?

The pic is from late on the second day of roof building [the second weekend of the Big Building Phase].   

To make extra sure that the rafters would stay in place, he cut gussets [trapezoid shaped pieces] that he glued and  nailed in on each side of the roof [inside] where it joined the second story ceiling.   Sorry no pic.   The gussets support the bottom points of the triangle where the lower edge meets the edges of the triangle that go up. 

It took a lot of precise cutting and heavy lifting to make that roof.   It also took some nimble feet and careful walking so as not to slam one's head into the shorter attic area.  

See the red ladder on the left?   That's how we're getting up to the second floor right now. 

Yeah we're the cover story for White Trash Homes and Gardens.  I keep telling myself it could be worse.  We are, after all, living in a construction site.

You can sort of see the general shape of the new part.  The windows are not cut out yet up top.   The back shorter addition will be ripped off and replaced with something with an actual foundation under it, taller ceilings and a roof that doesn't sag. 

Also, we'll have a real stairway inside the house.   We are not planning on using the ladder forever and entering through the girls closet.   

In case you wondered.

Putting on a New Second Floor

As you know, we've been doing some renovating.   We started by digging and pouring a whole new foundation.

Then we built some new walls around the old house.

Then it was time to put the second floor on top of the new walls.

Just how did we do that with the old roof in the way?, you ask.

That's a good question.   It took a lot of planning.   Very careful planning.   And very careful placement of support columns in strategic places inside the existing house.  Because the first thing we had to do was put in a beam in the new ceiling that goes the entire length of the house [north to south].   Then lay the joists east to west. 

Eric did that through the existing roof.  There was a lot of old roof in the way.  It had to be stripped and sawzalled out.   I love the sawzall.   In the pic above, you can see the rafters of the old roof sticking out of the floor of our new second story. 
 
Here's a view from the ground, up into the floor of the new second story.  

Yes, all of this meant that for weeks we had an open roof. 

No.  The weather did not cooperate.   More on that later.  

The Dumpster

At the end of October, we decided that we needed a dumpster to hold all the trash that was going to come off the roof.  

We got the big one and promptly started filling it.   Eric peeled the old roofing off and dropped it down and at the end of the day, the girls and I bagged it and hauled it to the dumpster.  



Roofing is freaking heavy.   In case you wondered.  It's also full of nails.   It's also really ugly.

There were three layers.  Gray, Pink [yes.] and tar paper.  Here's a pile of the bottom layer of tar paper.   

Then there was the old decking - cedar or poplar planks with the occasional oak one thrown in.  

Then came the rafters.   I'll tell you about that in the next post.