Covering up the Office Floor Joists

It’s been a minute, since we’ve really tackled any house work. Things have been busy on other fronts, work most of all (Liz in particular has been running ragged for the last few weeks).

Tonight, I put in a bit of time after work, and got back into the front office. We’ve got stacks of insulation to go into the floor joists, and have been in at a bit of a standstill.

In particular: the floor joists closest to the West side of the house… are partially covered/open. There are spaces between the floor and the front porch ceiling, and they’re just cavernous openings – with a lot of cold air rushing in.

Add to this that we’ve got a lot of electrical conduit through here, and closing up the openings was a bit challenging.

My approach: cut a few strips of plywood, and affix them to the underside of the joists. Then, using some thinner plywood that we had lying around… cut them to fit into the space of the floor joists.

One challenge was the fact that I couldn’t just size a piece of plywood to set down in the joist, due to there being conduit right in the middle. So I needed to kind of superimpose two pieces across each other.

It won’t hold a ton of weight, but would be strong enough to hold up some insulation. And also cover up these openings.

One fun tool: a right angle attachment. I first saw one of these from Bob, back in 2016, when he was working on a complicated fitting. And again saw it earlier this year, when he was squeezing in some tight ducts in our basement.

When I saw this attachment at Home Depot recently, I pointed it out to Liz. I mentioned it seemed handy, but wasn’t planning on getting it; she was the one who insisted we purchase it, saying that when we’d need it we’d need it.

Lo and behold, just a few short weeks later, here we are.

A small area in the SW corner.

A longer run by the NW corner of the house. This isn’t pretty, but… no one is ever going to see this except me.

And well, you, I guess. But let’s not tell anyone else.

Again, it won’t hold up a lot of weight, but it’ll ride. Enough to support some insulation, and I daresay that it’s helped to warm up the room just a bit.

Related:
A Day of Prep
Sunday Office Demo
Bob and the Curved Duct Fitting