Bedroom Bathroom Remodel Questions

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Temporary kitchen
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New beam. You can see two of the three floor joists that were unsupported in the last picture. These locations were designed to carry the roof load.
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This is where I am today. You can see the 2x10 the floor joists are sitting on is carrying a lot of the load. I plan to slide a 6x8 under this and add new posts. You can also see the temporary support beam I'm putting in to hold the house up while I add the new posts and beams.
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We just figured you used your "tools" in post #9 to finish the job or invited Steve over to a party :grinpimp:

For some reason I've always thought it was wrong not to put out the fires my wife starts whens she is cooking. Then again, after i put them out I wonder why I didn't just let it go.

Wow! That's a ton of work. Got to love PO's.

Yeah, well in their defense, I think times were a little different back then. I'm guessing these changes took place in the 1930s or 40s. My best guess is the foundation and basement were done at the same time. The beam was moved to provide support for something very heavy. There were a total of five 6x6's as well as some additional 2x10 for support in about a 3 square foot area of the new beam. Since the house was used as a store, I'm guessing a freezer is what was being supported. Whatever it was it must have been heavy.

The support looked something like this drawing. Imagine laying on you back on the basement floor and looking up.
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Working on adding the beam in the basement. Got things jacked and supported and pulled the post. Small problem - the pad I plan to use for the post is not level. This needs to carry the load of the house. Grinding seems very messy. Considering mortar mix. I could also put up some forms around the existing pad and add 4 - 6 inches of concrete and some rebar. Problem with this is I have a 6 - 8 inch pad above the floor, of course it is already 2 inches above.

Any thoughts for leveling?

I plan to use a Simpson ABU66 for installation of the post.

1. ABU66
2. Pad
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Got a little work done yesterday and today - maybe 5 hours each day. Today I had help so I didn't get as much accomplished as normal.

I got the temporary supports installed and jacked enough to remove the original posts. Then I got the beams in place and some temp supports for those. I have another eight foot section of beam to go. After that beam is in I'll work on getting the permanent posts installed.

Pictures tell the story - getting the temp support installed.
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And this is what I have left. Going to be a little work. As you can see, I had been concerned about the load this 2x10 was carrying so I built a three foot wall to give some support for the new bathroom, which is directly above. For now, I'll try to leave the drywall and tile around the sink in tact but will eventually extend the counter so there is a little room around the sink.

If I was any good at framing, I'd cut the wall at just the right height, cap it with a 2x10, and slide the beam right in on top.
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Here's a couple old ones I just scanned. The first picture is the day I took ownership of the house showing the old storefront. The second picture is about 10 month later. I had originally planned to keep the storefront and spent a bunch of money putting in a new floor, meaning new 2x10 and plywood. I ended up cutting it out a few months later.

These two pictures show a pretty amazing transformation that took place seemingly in one day. When I was preparing to remove the storefront, I removed the floor, ceiling and roof and left the walls standing. I then rebuilt the house inside the store. I framed in the exterior walls, added windows, built a new porch, sided and roofed. Then on a Saturday, my brother and I tore down all the walls.

In the morning, it looked like the first picture. In the evening I had a new house with a front porch suitable for relaxing with a cold beverage. :beer:
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Sounds like you took on quite the challenge there.

Makes remodeling my 1914 home look simple in comparison. :lol:
 
Sounds like you took on quite the challenge there.

Makes remodeling my 1914 home look simple in comparison. :lol:

I knew when I bought the house it was going to need some work. The structural work has been a little unexpected. It's probably my own fault since I didn't hire an inspector when I bought the house. I did the inspection myself. Guess I missed a couple things. I probably would have bought anyway since this was the only house I could afford in the neighborhood.

Here's a couple pictures of when I was doing Phase 2 which was living room, dining room, bedroom 1, bedroom 2 and adding a bathroom. I started out in the crawl space. I'm pretty sure the half basement was added and when they dug it out, they threw all the dirt in the crawl space and buried the bottoms of all the posts. Of course they were all rotted. At least they left the beam.

I spent a month in that area jacking, supporting, mixing concrete, pouring new pads and putting in new posts. I even built a cinder block wall because for some reason there was no foundation there. The wall wasn't my best work, but it's structurally sound.

They had also added a 2x10 support midway between the front of the house and the original support. That one wasn't supported well either and although it's not required I kept it anyway. I added another 2x10 so it was doubled and supported with pier blocks.
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Here's what I did today. Cut out the wall where the beam had to go and found some plumbing in the way. No big deal - just a vent pipe. I cut out the old, lowered it about 2 inches and put it back together. You can see where I turned the T the opposite direction so instead of going up the pipe goes straight across. The only reason I did it the way I did originally was to keep the pipe close to the ceiling.
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After the plumbing was taken care of, I installed the beam. Pretty uneventful except when I wacked my head on the beam. I really didn't want to put a beam in this location because this spot is the entry to the basement. It used to be 6'1", giving me just enough room to get through without ducking. Now it's about 5'6". I'm going to have to attach some padding to the beam and paint it safety yellow.

I finished off the day running a string from end to end. It's a little off, about 3/4 of an inch in the worst spot. I'll just have to work it the best I can.
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Not nitpicking, just curious, why didn't you go with an LVL beam?

When we ripped out a drop down in our kitchen, found out there was no support. There was only the outside wall originally, but they had added a shed roof over an addition that started on the (former) outside wall of the house. Since they removed the outside wall, there was no real support there (other than the double top plate they left).

A builder friend of mine recommended an LVL beam, even though it was clear it wasn't required (we removed a couple hundred pounds of weight, and even with that weight there was no sag) as a "just in case" measure, and because it was the correct way to do it. I asked about a solid beam, but he wasn't a fan, didn't say why specifically.

So....what was your reasoning here? :hhmm:
 
I can think of three reasons why I chose the wood beam – readily available, I can do the work myself, and wood has worked effectively in houses for hundreds of years. The only drawback I saw was shrinkage. My back of the napkin calculation was a potential of ¼” shrinkage over the height of the 6x8, so feasibly 7 ½ could go to 7 ¼ (not likely). I thought about what I was working with and concluded that ¼” would have little impact. Heck, the floor joist had at least 1/8” of variance.

When I put in the first beam, I considered going with a glulam but I didn’t see where it was really an advantage for what I was doing (admittedly I was not familiar with the LVL until just now). Besides the lack of shrinkage, the only advantage I saw was potential elimination of support posts. If my basement had 8 foot ceilings, then eliminating posts would be an advantage. The fact that it has six foot ceilings means I can’t walk around down there without ducking.

The way it is now, I have a 12x20 area that I can safely walk around in. I hope to make this a play area for the kids someday. On the outside of the beams, one side is a stairway and the other side is open but only about 3’ wide. I plan to fill these areas in with storage.
 
Got a little more work done this weekend. A few posts back I asked about the best way to level the existing concrete pads. I decided to go with some structural grout, Sika 212.

I had to build some forms and I did a pretty poor job on them, well that and I mixed the grout a little thinner than I wanted. So I had a lot of leaks that had to be patched and I created a pretty good mess that I had to clean up.

Prior to doing the grout, I picked up some 5/8 threaded rod, drilled the pads and glued the rod into place. This will be used for holding the post base anchors.

Total time was about 6 hours to do everything over two days. With any luck I'll be ready to install the new posts this weekend.

Pictures for your entertainment...

If you look closely, you'll see in the third picture that the original post support beneath the concrete floor was a rock.
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Some more pictures.

1. The grout I used.
2. The mess I made - you can see where the grout flowed outside the forms.
3. The grout where it is supposed to be after a little clean up.
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