Watcha doin???

I think sometimes the problem is that local tradesmen end up with more work than they can cope with. I had one guy decline to look at my job because he wasn't taking on any more work that year. That was in September. When I gave the electrician the go-ahead to upgrade my breaker panels it was nearly three months before he got to me. I get it - you take a ticket and join the line - but it's frustrating to be waiting in line with other jobs backing up behind it.

 

Sunny skies!

 

Trying to figure out if my house is held together with skyhooks or something.

In one room where I pulled down the wall I found where the joists supporting the floor were in turn supported by the brickwork of the house. There were gaps around the joists, so I sealed and filled them in. That room is now much warmer. The adjacent room is also cold, so I figured the problem was the same and pulled down the two external walls. I found lots of gaps in the brickwork but don't see any evidence that the joists supporting the floor are supported by, well, anything. They seem to run in the direction I expected and on one end they are supported by an interior wall. On the other end they appear to be supported by....... nothing.

I'm not entirely sure this is holding together. I can only assume there's some kind of lattice of hefty timber nailed together and then nailed into the wall studs but so far don't see a whole lot of evidence of any kind of support. I can only assume that whatever is holding it together involves a lot of nails because in the corner that logically should be furthest from any solid support the floor can take my weight plus a heavy dresser without showing any signs of dipping or sagging.

I had planned to cut the studs out and reframe the wall but now I'm not sure I will. I may cut away the ones that obviously aren't carrying anything - there are a couple that move side-to-side with virtually no force applied at all - and then fill the gaps between them with insulation material.

 

These joists are between the 1st and 2nd floors - from the first floor they are above the ceiling (it turns out there's a lath-and-plaster ceiling, with a tile ceiling somewhere below it), and support two (maybe more) layers of flooring in a 2nd floor room.

The house was built in 1910 and extended somewhere around 1935 so modern day building codes didn't apply, a fact which is very apparent when looking around...

 

The strange thing is that in the adjacent room the joists are supported by the concrete blocks of the walls. The ends of the joists are notched, and there's a gap in the wall to support them. Sadly whoever built it didn't bother to fill the gaps around it, but that's nothing a can of building foam won't fix.

Here it looks like there's a joist that's nailed into the wall studs, which in turn are nailed to the concrete blocks. Then the flooring is laid over the top of the joist. I wouldn't have thought it would be strong enough to support the floor but it's stood there for over 80 years so it must be up to the job.

 

Fun and games with an angle grinder.

Imagine, if you will, a corner in a wall made of concrete blocks. Now imagine the process of extending the house, such that the corner is now part of a longer wall. The bricks that once continued at 90 degrees to the wall are broken off, but the broken edge still protrude a couple of inches or so away from the wall. Now add a window to one side and a wooden stud attached to the wall on the other side.

I needed to cut everything flush with the main wall so I have space to put an insulation panel in there. Needless to say getting tools in there is tricky because of the restricted space. But I managed to get the angle grinder in there to cut off the most prominent protrusions, then used it to cut channels through the concrete so I could cut the main body of the blocks into a kind of zig zag pattern. Then came the really messy part, using the grinder as a grinder to grind away as much of the protrusion as I could manage. Along the way it overheated and shut down, so I put the battery on charge while it cooled down and continued with a hammer and masonry chisel. Having gone through a few cycles of that I think the bricks are now more or less flush with the remainder of the wall. The battery is on charge (again) and this time I plan to fully charge it rather than just put some charge into it while the grinder cools off.

It was remarkable just how much dust the process generated, even though I was working right next to a window and was using a box fan to pump air out of the room. It took a while to clean it all up.... and I was very glad for a HEPA filter in the shop vac and a HEPA-rated respirator. I was also glad for my eye protection - it's not a job I'd have attempted without safety glasses and based on the number of times I heard fragments of brick ping off my glasses I suspect there's a significant chance I'd have lost all or some of my vision had I not been wearing them.

Trying to get the brick dust out of my hair in the shower was interesting - at first the water seemed to just run off my hair, then after lathering up with shampoo I got some out. I think by the time I was done I had lathered up with shampoo three or four times but finally got it all out of my hair and beard. Horrible stuff.... my working clothes are in the washine machine. Before I left the room I was working on I stood by the fan and rubbed my hands over them, and saw the fan suck the clouds of dust outside. Horrible stuff..... I really hope I don't have to revisit this job to cut the bricks back any further.

 

Are you familiar with that kind of setup? It turns out the studs in the upstairs room are slightly less than two inches deep, so I'm going to want to reframe the wall so I can fit my insulation panels in there.

What I want to to is cut the studs off at ground level and then build a new frame, secured to the tops of the cut studs and the joists that support the attic. Obviously I don't want to find my upstairs room started to self-identify as a downstairs room and undergo some kind of realignment process.

 

I may end up doing something like that, although I'd really prefer to stick with one set of studs, especially since restudding out to 4" would mean I'd have more air gaps that I'd rather avoid, and also it would mean I'd need to rejig the window frames too.

What I'd really like to do, but I have no idea whether it's even a sensible proposition, is to take the floor and ceiling out, remove all the joists, and then replace them with individual joists that span the entire room below, and cut holes into an exterior wall to hold the joists. Then I can cut exactly what I need, and seal around them as I go. I'm not sure whether that's the sort of project that's so big it doesn't bear thinking about, or the sort of thing that isn't actually very complex as long as it's done systematically.