Future Stairwell Floor Joists are Finally Hung!

Before I get to far behind....

We are on day 33 of our House Flip project!  Hard to believe we have worked on this for 6 months already.  The goal for the month of June was to have the foundation ready to hire out the framing to be done in July.

The first weekend in June, Gabe's dad came for a visit.  We even got a day's work out of him!  This is my favorite shot of them working together:

No, they aren't posing for this

First they removed the sheathing (shown above).  Then the decision was made to remove the cement block pier since it is in the way of building up the wall on that side (the suspended wall is being supported in other places now).

All gone!!

They need to get everything lined up:

Then they started building up the foundation wall to go under the walls seen precariously suspended here.  They have to secure them onto the pins that are sticking up (shown above).

Meanwhile, I am finishing up securing joists in other locations.  I did a lot of hammering that day!

Talk about awkward

They had to cut the pieces and nail them from the bottom, so they had to create the whole section first, and then install it.

Sadly enough, with all the lumber in the crawl space where they were working, Gabe sprained his ankle.  As you can see above there is a piece of black duct tape covering a substantial cut also from the fall on his right arm.  But that didn't stop him!!!

Look, they are working so nicely together!

That, is a stud.

Next the install:

And done!

Below is a shot of the new crawl space entrance.  It will be a heated/cooled space.  Finally we have a legitimate supporting agent!

Gabe and Dad C. are attaching a ledger board to to the ends of the joists under what will be the kitchen space:

Poor Gabey got a nasty scrape!

Later at home, after Gabe to his boot off, his ankle swelled right up!  

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The next day we worked was Friday the 8th of June.  A lot was happening this day!!  We weren't alone---when we got out to the house around 2 pm we found one of Dad's church friends working on some blocking.

Blocking is an important step because it helps secure floor joists.  Notice above the differences in the two spaces--the width between joists.  We had to completely remove all the rotten joists from the kitchen/dining room side (far side) so we replaced them with the standard width: 16 inches.  The main space, in the foreground, which is the oldest part built in the 1890's, is surprisingly in tact.  We didn't replace them but reinforced them with side-by-side joists.  So, they ended up being wider spaced, which entails more blocking: placed at the end of each horizontal plywood joint.

We received a truckload of 4 X 8 sheets of treated and untreated plywood for the flooring, which we weren't exactly ready for, but it will be nice for when we are:

Gabe is prepping the space for the new floor joists:

I measured and spaced out the joist hangers:

The joist soldiers are all cut and ready to be hung:

All these joists were first attached to a ledger board so they could be lowered into the joist hangers at the same time.

Here they are now, getting the finally boards in place:

And voila!

Done and done.

I went back in and secured all the joists by hammering them down:

Action shot!

The last thing we had to do was move all the plywood from the yard to under the roof to keep it from rotting.  There must have been more than 20 sheets!  Hats off to Gabe, who did most of it, like usual :)