Time for a long overdue update…

Absolutely too long since my last update, my apologies…

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Lets recap:

In order to make way for a fairly open concept, we planned to remove most of the interior walls of the original house (if you don’t remember, check this out).

In late 2018 we completely gutted rooms 3 & 4 to make way for the new kitchen (if you don’t remember, check this out) and rooms 5 & 6, which along with room 7, will be our new living room (if you don’t remember, check this out).

 

 

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We removed nearly every wall…

 

Unfortunately most of them were load bearing, which meant they were holding up the second floor! I didn’t want any posts or soffits, so that meant all structural components needed to be up in the ceiling. This was not going to be easy!

We needed help…

We hired a structural engineer to plan it out (which ended up to be a debacle in itself, as he made an error in the first set of plans that cost us a lot of time and money) and found out that labor, to do what we needed, was going to be outrageous!

So to save thousands, Steve decided to do the labor himself and spent many of his weekends in 2019 making this dream a reality.

 

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The first thing he placed was a steel beam (most everything we needed to do would tie into this)…

 

These two 10 ton Jack Posts held up the majority of the second floor load for months, until all the other supports could get into place. I’ll show you later how we permanently supported this!

 

Steve had to cut through many original ceiling joists to fit in new laminated veneer lumber (LVL) structural beams…

 

and to do that he had to place temporary walls on both sides of the cuts (new lumber in photo below).

 

Thankfully he could re-use the temporary walls as he had many to do. We used 28 LVL’s over the course of the project but only got a few at a time…

 

as our transport options are limited.

 

Some areas required just one beam and others required 2-4 screwed together.

Each LVL, or group of LVL’s, required steel hangers to support them. Many had to be ordered and several had to be fabricated for our project.

Each hanger required 38 screws on the heavy end (where it attached to the main structural support in the attic) and 24 screws on the lighter end (where it attached to another joist).

 

You see that huge LVL beam (above and below), that’s what replaced those two 10 ton Jack Posts.

It’s three 11″ high by 16 foot long LVL’s screwed together and runs above the new kitchen resting on the ceiling joists and the steel beam.

Here’s a view from the second floor attic space.

 

Steve shimmied each one, weighing in at 112 pounds, up between two ceiling joists and then pushed it into place! Once all three were up there he screwed them together.

Unbelievable, right?

He’s resourceful and relentless when it comes to figuring out a way to make the impossible happen.

He’s done it time after time! You’re my hero :).

 

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Shifting the load, as we did, altered where we needed supports in the crawl space so temporary Jack Posts were used down there as well. Then Steve dug and poured footings and built 3 new structural piers.

 

 

It’s a very cramped space to do that kind of work especially when your 6’5 but he never complains!

 

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All the structural elements were finally in place and the day he removed those two Jack Posts was amazing!

The whole space was open-

 

I’d been dreaming of that moment for 4 years and it did not disappoint!

We still have a ton of work to do but that day, seeing the fruits of a year’s worth of his labor, has energized us to keep moving.

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We also did quite a few other projects in 2019 that are HUGE!

Stay tuned and as always keep it simple and do it with sass!!

Kimberly