In my last post, I promised to tell you about our unexpected problem. It was discovered while we were hanging the curtain rods. Dan's ladder suddenly lurched and to our dismay, we saw that the floor was separating from the wall where his ladder stood next to the front register. Yikes!
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| It isn't especially noticeable without the ladder + Dan's weight on it. But if it hadn't been for the ladder incident, we might not have discovered it. |
The logical approach to repair would be to crawl under the house and fix it from underneath. But that presented challenges. One being that the crawl space at the front of the house is quite low. Another is the way the ductwork was installed. It should have been installed with a main trunk down the center of the house and branches to each room. Instead, the installer made a huge loop of ductwork under the house, making it difficult to crawl around under there (especially considering the problem Dan has with his knees).
The other option was to go through the front porch floor. This is where using my homestead blog as a journal is invaluable. We were able to look at the photos from my 2014 Tearing Into the Front Porch blog post and make a plan.
12 comments:
Fortunately I have never found such things in either of the houses I have owned but it does worry me. I see it quite often on shows like This Old House where the joists have been compromised by previous occupants to know I have likely been just lucky.
Who wouldn't want a trap door? ;0D I love the way your hubbs finds the solutions using good 'ole common sense. We need more of that in this world. Well done!
It's a good thing you and Dan know enough to come up with solid work-arounds! My little house has quite a few, but I can't do a lot of this work myself anymore (like the recent crawlspace episode) and I just thank my lucky stars that my recently-discovered handy neighbor likes a challenge and doesn't mind getting dirty.
Ed, before Dan and I bought this place, we looked at a two-story house where the previous owners had knocked out a wall to make the study and living room into one big room. Unfortunately, they knocked out a load bearing wall so that when we saw it, the floor was sagging something like 6 inches in the upstairs room above where that wall was. It didn't even feel safe to walk into that room. Obviously, that house went immediately to our "no" list!
We've run into enough "what was he thinking" problems in this house to keep us scratching our heads.
Daisy, Dan always figures something out! Even when something seems impossible, he always finds a solution. I tell him he's my superman. :)
Quinn, Dan gets all the credit for this one. I just take pics to document! It's definitely helpful to have someone around who understands how things work and can think creatively.
Ladder shifting while I am on it = one of my top ten fears.
What a great job at innovating!
Good job trouble shooting the problem!
TB, it is a scary experience. Fortunately all's well that ends well!
Dicky Bird, I thought so too! I'm really glad to have the problem repaired. Now I'm on to getting the room put in order.
Some old houses have interesting surprises. My cousin's house had an upright log supporting the floor area where the refrigerator was because there weren't enough floor joists in that area. I'm glad that your fix wasn't too horribly difficult or expensive.
Nina, yes, lots of creativity in building and repairing in the old days. Probably why they started requiring permits and building inspections!
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