Extra Support

You might think that Carpenter Jim’s Injury would have halted progress indefinitely, but after a short week of recuperation, he was back at it on our next Support Project - Sistering Joists. What a guy!

The joists supporting the main floor of the house were probably undersized for the room span, so the best thing is to double up, or sister, the joists for better stability.

The result is great - now our floors no longer bounce in the middle.

Unfortunately though, the plumbing isn’t holding up to the movement and is now leaking in no fewer than 4 places.

This little project has now spawned Scope Creep into Plumbing.

To further improve our House Stability experience, Carpenter Jim has also faced the interior Pony Window Wall with plywood (after first running electrical wiring behind it and insulating).

The Gas Meter Set Assembly

Now that we have a good idea what the Eventual plan looks like, I know where to put the furnace and hot water heater, and can figure out where to locate the gas meter.

Instructions for gas meter location requirements are buried so deeply on PSE's
web site that I actually had to call to figure it out - but here's where to find it.

It's your basic instructions to keep PSE's customers Alive to Pay Another Bill.

With this, I found pretty much the only qualifying location on the North side of the house, so in retrospect I probably didn't need to go through the exercise of figuring out where the furnace was going to go.

Carpenter Jim and the 20 Ton Car Jack

Now that we realize that Inertia is holding up our house, Support is the order of the day.

Basically, the process is that Jim put down a floor plate under the support beam and attached a couple of 2”x 4”s to the support beam , then he lined up a 4’’ x 4’’ post on top of a 20 ton car jack, and jacked up the house until the upstairs floor above was roughly level (about ¾”)

Once level-ness was achieved, he then measured a stud of the appropriate length, and nailed it in next to the car jack/post combo.

This was all going quite well (except for my anxiety about my house moving up and down) until The Attack of the Killer 20 Ton Car Jack.

Somehow during the jacking process, the 20 Ton Car Jack attacked Carpenter Jim and destroyed his fingernail. I missed the actual event, but not the gaping wound which Jim just had to Share. Fortunately, it’s a short hop from Ballardia to US Healthworks on 83rd & Aurora, which is open Saturdays to fix all of those home improvement mishaps. They were able to patch him up and give him good drugs.

Luckily, he’ll grow a new one.

Score: Car Jack, 1, Carpenter Jim, 0.

Tools & Materials: Skilled Carpenter, 20 ton car jack, level, lumber, emergency room.

Our House Needs a Bra

Now that the ceiling has been cleared out, Carpenter Jim has disconnected ½ of our ducting so he can access and fix Ballardia II’s structural issues.

We’ve lost the heater vents in the living room and in Martin’s office, but still have heat ducts in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.

More interestingly, with the ducting out of the way, we see exactly why the floor in the hallway feels a bit spongy. The main support beam to the south of the stairway doesn’t actually have anything supporting it.

Sure it looks good in Visio, but how does it look in Orange Spray Paint?

At Ballardia Classic, when we put in the downstairs bath, a slight error in arithmetic forced us into the rather sparse category of 10" rough-in toilets. Martin, it turns out, is Rather Picky about the looks of the Throne, so he was never happy with the resulting Kohler Wellworth over there in the picture on the right. (Didn't I do a lovely job with the tile though? Pat myself on the back)



This time, having learned from our mistakes, we're mapping out The Plan in Orange Spray Paint on the floor so we can see whether the Plan is in fact viable, and whether we can accomodate the 12" standard rough-in toilet of Martin's choosing.




The picture makes it look smaller than it actually is.....

Shouldn’t we be moving to California?

Back in December, we were hit with the news that we may be packing up our bags and heading to Orange County. So why are we still in Ballardia?

Good Question. Ask Martin. I for one am not going to question this lest it be Oversight which will be Noticed when brought to someone’s attention.