Adding Supports on the First Floor

Bob was over again for a full day working on the house. I had work work I needed to catch up on, and so I spent most of my time in the office, working on my computer. But luckily, Liz was around and worked alongside Bob to help put in some new support beams on the first floor.

We had some temporary beams in place (sitting on jacks), to help support the weight of all the drywall we had brought up to the second floor.

But today’s task was to jack up the floor a bit more, to try to remove a pretty severe dip in the second floor hallway. And to also provide a more permanent set of columns (which will allow Bob to rebuild the wall running along the stairs).

The good news: Bob and Liz were able to almost entirely remove the huge sag on the second floor. In Bob’s words, he said it was better than he could have hoped for.

On top of that, the columns Bob and Liz created were pretty uniform in length – and they discovered that much of the floor (in the dining room) appeared to be pretty level. So that might mean less work than we though, when we get around to tearing up the floor down here.

Getting these beams in place was a big step, as we needed to get this done before we could drywall the southern bedroom wall. With the sag removed, and things more supported… we’re able to continue with the rest of the bedroom drywall.

Before Bob left, he and I moved in the remaining drywall pieces into the bedroom (so he could continue working on his own, next week).

After Bob left, Liz continued working for over an hour – picking up, sweeping, cutting up debris so it would fit in our dumpsters… and hauled all the trash out to the curb.

Liz put in a full day, and then some.

Later in the evening, as I was walking upstairs… I ended up tripping on the top step. This was due to the fact that, with the floor jacked up and the sag removed… the top step is now more where it should be (and my body had just gotten used to a lower top step).

Liz and I joked about me tripping, and how awesome this actually was.

Related:
A New Support Beam in the Basement